The Frustrated CFO

Respect Your Audience: Reflections Triggered by Matthew Good's Concert at Mercury Lounge

Let's face it - most of business professionals, including CFO's and controllers, like hearing themselves talk. Frequently, we cannot stop ourselves, going on and on about some business matter, or bitching about some subordinate, or superior, or peer. Presentations are too long to hold listeners' attention, pitches are unfocused, emails look like novellas, and meeting speeches are self-aggrandizing. There is no denying - that pervasive affliction of humanity, narcissism, is inescapable.

The sad truth is that by doing this we depreciate ourselves - people see it as overcompensation for hidden insecurities. Moreover, such behavioral tendencies give the listeners a good reason to be dismissive. They will feel disrespected and resist to be receptive.

However, even with that affliction sometimes obstructing our way to successful communications, most of us have enough common sense and professional experience not to offend our audience with outright insults. The nature of our positions forces us to be diplomatic. We are in the business of dealing with brash bosses, prima-donna sales people, sensitive customers, important bankers, strategic suppliers, valuable subordinates, and whoever else the job brings into our habitats. The words we use and thoughts we express have a potential of affecting our company's business in a positive or negative way. So, we'd better be respectful, and, most of the time, we are.

These thoughts kept popping into my head last week during Matthew Good's concert at Mercury Lounge. The whole experience was a bit strange. I've been listening to this Canadian rocker's beautiful music, channeled through his amazing vocal and guitar skills, since the 90s (God bless them!). Now, standing right in front of the tiny stage, I've observed a 40-year-old (looking over 50), kinda balding, kinda pudgy, unkempt man, who managed to down three large glasses of gin in a span of 90 minutes. 

It was unexpected, but I really-really don't care what people look like as long as they do their job well. And I've got to say, when Mr. Good sang, it made you forget everything: his age, your age, what he looks like, and what you look like now, and all the shit that happened in 20 years since you first heard him. The trouble was the man sang only half the time.

Dana Carvey once said that all comedians want to be rock stars; apparently, and vice versa. Matthew talked after every song (literally): SNL sketches, whooping cough epidemic in Vancouver, one of his kids being a bastard, postnasal drip, Lance (his guitar Dobby/drinks server/on-the-road chef), hot dogs - what have you. I was standing there thinking, "Dude, do your job, sing. Have some fucking respect - it's midnight on a Wednesday night, some of us worked all day and have to work tomorrow."

It got worse: as the blood alcohol level was rising, his widely known political side started coming out. When he began throwing accusations regarding American government's shadiness mixed with condescending remarks like, "You should know what your government is doing" into the audience (thanks, dude, without your Canadian ass I wouldn't know how to form political opinions!), someone else voiced, "What about your government?"

But at the end, it was an issue related to his own music, with which he hit the ultimate low of disrespect. The exhausted, but still forgiving fans started throwing song requests at him; some from The Matthew Good Band's first album "Last of the Ghetto Astronauts." "There is a better chance for my starting chewing crack than for your forcing me to sing anything from that album. Common, people, admit it - that was crap written by a 24-year-old." This is to those who bought the album and listened to it since 1995, plus many members of the audience who are in their 20s now, yet know every word of lyrics you wrote when they were wearing pampers? How offensive is that?

Essentially, touring musicians are in business of selling their albums and solidifying their fan base, thus making sure that people will buy tickets again and again. In that, they are not much different from other business professionals.  The way I see it, they should be afraid to lose their paying customers the same way we do. Alas, Matthew Good thinks differently. Well, I'm not buying next time.

Follow-Up to "What if You Don't Look the Part?"

As my readers know from December 7th, 2011 post What If You Don't Look the Part, I am not much of a football fan.  However, I am a big fan of people showing haters what's what.  So...

Congratulations to New York Giants for winning their fourth Super Bowl!  Congratulations to Eli Manning for getting an MVP Award for the second time and orchestrating winning plays during crunch time in 50% of Giants' victories, goofy smile and silly hat notwithstanding!

SOPA, PIPA and "CFO Techniques"

The inner conflict many intelligent people experience over Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), is an old problem for me. For many years before the pharmaceutical and media lobbies brought the issue of proprietary rights infringement in the Internet age to Washington DC, I've been torn between two firm believes of mine: (1) that content creators (writers, musicians, artists, designers, etc.) are entitled to get paid whenever their creative products are used for commercial purposes (i.e. to make money), and (2) that the information available on the Internet cannot be restricted by any means.

That's why more than 10 years ago, I thought of Napster as a violator of musicians' rights to financially benefit from their products. It was obvious to me that the whole purpose of the "file-sharing service" was Sean Parker's publicity stunt to show off the Fanning brothers' technological platform with a purpose of selling it and profiting from it (which is exactly what happened).

YouTube, whose owners obviously always intended to capitalize on the advertising, is also at fault when it lets the users to upload copyrighted material without paying the content owners royalty out of their revenues. On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong with YouTube being a promotional portal for young artists, musicians, filmmakers, and such (including the crazy exhibitionists catering to voyeurs), who upload their own creations knowingly in hopes of receiving the tangible benefits of being noticed.

Of course, the most conflicting entity is Google. On one hand, we cannot exist without their search engine (I am well aware that there are geeky alternatives out there, but let's face it - Google dominates); on the other hand, when it comes to the Internet advertising they are the closest example of a monopoly we've got in our screwed up economy. Moreover, Google attains its riches by using every single one of us, the information-seeking users. Ultimately, it's in their interests to tag counterfeiters and bootleggers, because users are looking for them. And I guess they know that their hands are not exactly clean. Why else would they settle with the Department of Justice to pay $500 million for allowing Canadian Pharmacies' advertisement?

Presently the issue of the online copyright infringement hits very close to home for me. A bunch of unlicensed eBook-hacking sites are offering "CFO Techniques" downloads for free. Neither me nor my publisher is getting a single penny out of this, while the sites' owners get advertising income, revenues on sales of their users' information, and ability to pollute the hapless freeloaders' computers with the spyware invisibly attached to the plug-ins required for viewing the books. They profit unfairly using MY PRODUCT. And that's not fair.

Still, even this wouldn't force me to support the half-assed anti-constitutional laws like SOPA and PIPA. Why? Because if these laws are passed, I could go to jail for offering my readers a clip from "So, I Married an Axe Murderer" within my post about The Best Boss in Cinematic History , even though I derive no material benefits from this blog (none at all). I'd rather people steal my shit than go along with freedom of speech violations in the name of copyrights protection.

Yet, I am all for fighting piracy in an intelligent way that doesn't take our civil liberties away. And the "financial benefit" criteria seems to my CFO mind like a sensible approach. If a site takes any form of payments or generates advertising revenue through deliberate peddling (not just illustrative usage) of unlicensed and unpaid for content, the enablers of payment processing and advertising portals should stop providing their services to this site. This would be not much different than YouTube's actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA): they get a notice and remove the violating content.

Money is the key. I always said that the best way to fight terrorism is going after the financial sources. The now supposedly dead Osama Bin Laden without his multimillion wealth would've been just a thug on the street. Facebook without the advertisement revenue would be just a well-designed electronic hangout with no prospects for an IPO (expected in May this year).

Apple's iAd Division Celebrates Christmas

December is still with us and so are the corporate X-mas parties. The holiday cheer is inescapable for the dogged blogger like me.

Did you know that large public corporations, with their in-house event planners working schedules way in advance, always manage to have their parties as close to Christmas Day as possible? I guess it signifies how "family-like" those organizations are.

Apple's latest branching out child, the iAd division, held its party just six days before Christmas - on Monday, December 19th. Constructed out of the body parts of a mobile advertising start-up Quattro Wireless, acquired by the maker of iPhones and iPads in 2010, iAd was not moved to Apple Campus in Cupertino, CA. Instead, it stayed in the advertising capital of the world - New York City, albeit swapping the original small office in SoHo for a 45,000 square-foot expanse on Fifth Avenue at Union Square.

Everything needs to project an intended image! And so, they celebrated the traditional combination of year-end holidays in a semi-trendy restaurant in Chelsey, which is themed to alleviate nostalgic pangs of transplants from more humble regions of the US, while entertaining other patrons with a taste of Americana not found on the streets of Manhattan.

The spirit-lifting intent, customarily reserved for such parties, acquired a somewhat militant hue as iAd's execs came to the microphone, each with his own discourse on the same topic: "They all want to see us fail! But we will show them! We'll distroy them all!" Underneath all that bravado, however, there were unmistakable notes of fear. It's understandable, of course. iAd is locked in severe competition with Google for the $630 million market of ads streaming through smart phones directly into the sensory system of general public, incapable of ungluing itself from the beloved devices. The things are not going too well, though.

Apple first lost the edge when it couldn't outbid Google in acquisition of AdMob and had to settle for Quattro Wireless as a less desirable second choice. Advertisers have already rejected the original requirement of $1 million minimum commitment, which now has been slashed by more than 50%. And October departure of Quattro Wireless's founder Andy Miller, who originally accepted an Apple's VP position to lead the iAd team, only intensified the apprehension. This is public-company world - everything is about perception. The execs know their plight: today you are a big shot, but if you don't perform, you are out.

Booze and abusive behavior are traditional fear-drowning remedies for insecure males. The former was thoughtfully accommodated by the party organizers via the open-bar arrangement. Most attendees took advantage of the limitless supply; some with an enthusiasm of newborn calves, who need to be taken away from the udder lest they drink themselves to death. There was this one high-echelon specimen (let's call him The Boss's Boss) who was especially determined to stupefy himself, knocking down one gin after another. As he reached a certain condition, the desire to abuse could not be contained.

One of the waitresses serving the party was a remarkably attractive young woman (let's call her The Striking Girl). She had that star quality about her that causes double takes; something Nora Ephron once described as magnetism that makes a man across the room go, "Get me that!" An obvious target for a drunken bully.

He started by shoving a decorative tree onto her as she was passing. "I am pushing bush on bush," he sneered to other men around him. The Striking Girl didn't say anything - he was a customer. She remained poised and diligently went about her job.

You see, the thing about the hospitality industry in New York City is that a significant portion of waiting, bar-tending, catering, etc. staff consists of struggling writers, artists, actors, musicians - the creative hopefuls. Service jobs are usually divided into shifts and one can combine them into a flexible schedule that leaves time to attend to the true calling. The Striking Girl, as it turned out, happened to be an aspiring writer and a filmmaker, with her first short recently accepted to one of the New York's indie festivals. It explained her composure: she prepares herself to dealing with Hollywood and getting her ego bruised on daily basis.

So, she continued being friendly and pleasant to other attendees. When someone spoke with a Russian accent, she mentioned that she was born in St. Petersburg and was brought to New York as a baby by her political-refugee parents. The Boss's Boss, now never far away from her, heard that. "I have a friend," he said, "he just loves banging Russian pussy."

Next time he caught her in the tiny space of the service station. "Did you come to apologize?" she asked calmly. He thrust his drunken mug into her fragile cheek and responded with,"There is no need for apologies. It's that St. Petersburg love, baby."

Hey, I am a middle-aged broad. I know only too well that chivalry is dead, buried, its corpse rotted into dust long time ago. Still, it's shocking that not a single so-called "man" felt an urge to speak up on behalf of the young lady.

Is this the type of culture Apple Inc. cultivates? Of abusively unrestrained bosses and silent yes-men?

I wonder, how the parents of the Striking Girl felt, when they learned of this incident? Is this the type of democracy and liberty we offer here, in the United States of America, now? Any corporate honcho is free to behave like a dirty animal, while everyone else acts as if their mouths taped shut?

By the way, did you know that corporate execs in public companies get stocks as part of their bonuses? Well, I've sold my Apple stock after that party. The thought that my holding on to them may contribute to the further rise of share prices and one day make the Boss's Boss richer made me sick.

Insecure Business Owner/CEO

People write about insecure bosses all the time. There are blog posts, articles, book chapters, cartoons, movies, and TV shows devoted to the subject of dealing with a superior who feels threatened by his subordinates.  Hey, bosses are people and a vast majority of humanity is plagued by insecurities of various forms and degrees. The authors usually predict two possible outcomes of having such a boss: you will either find a way to overcome the problem and turn this person into your ally, or you get fired.  Curiously, in these writings "the boss" in question is usually another hired employee perched on a higher step of the hierarchy ladder.  (It has always surprised me, why these advisers never consider a possibility of you finding the way of getting the insecure boss fired.)

However, when your insecure boss owns the company that employs you, it's a completely different situation altogether.  Here he (or she, or they) was, the big boss with a business that he's built, thinking that he is the shit, the sharpest tool not just in some lousy shed, but in a suburban Home Depot... Until you came along, with your diverse expertise, broad fundamental knowledge, etc.

Now, you start discovering all kind of stupid stuff.  If you are indeed an experienced person, you are not running around like an idiotic show-off screaming that everything is wrong.  No, you tread lightly.  At the same time you must do your job and, therefore, correct the stupid stuff.  So, you say careful things like, "Excuse me, I mean no disrespect, but this and that is not done properly and will result in long-term losses; and, by the way, your accounting doesn't comply with prescribed rules."  You have no choice but to reveal painful observations such as, "You know, that operating system you bought just before your hired me (couldn't you wait?) on recommendation of someone you know, sucks!  You were misled - it's not an ERP, it's a retarded cousin of a real ERP twice removed."

Moreover, from time to time, things come out of your boss's mouth that are not just silly, they are embarrassingly incorrect.  Of course, you can ignore it, and yet you cannot, because if you don't clarify his confusions and educate him, he may say something stupid in front of your bankers, or investors, or auditors.  So, you have no choice but to find an appropriate way to straighten him out, raise his sophistication.

And even though you openly express due respect for his entrepreneurial abilities and acute commercial intuition, he cannot avoid feeling inadequate, insecure.  It's unpleasant and he doesn't like it at all.  Yet, unless you become rude and inappropriate, your job is secure.  The idea of firing you wouldn't even come to his logical conscious mind.  First of all, he knows that the company (i.e. his wallet) needs you and your improvements.  Secondly, you took over quite few tasks, freeing him for business development.   Finally, he doesn't have time or desire to go through the search process again.

Still, from time to time the subconsciousness feels pangs of wounded ego.  When that happens, he'll do anything to make himself feel better.  He will find one or another way to get back at you.  If you have an accent (Irish, Italian, Slavic, French), he will interrupt you in the middle of a meeting and ask the outsiders if they understand at least 30% of what you were saying, even though your English is fluent.  Your writing skills are likely to be far more superior than his, but he will make you run drafts of emails to important people by him, claiming their "political importance."  He may get into habit of reminding you that, considering your compensation, he expects a lot from you, even though you have exceeded all his expectations already.  And so on, and so forth...  

This behavior is childish.  The mere knowledge that it's rooted in his insecurity should help you to brush it off.  Don't let yourself to be hurt by it.  Don't think, "This is not fair, I am helping his business."  Don't take it as an insult.   Accept it as a testimony to your superiority.  

What If You Don't Look the Part?

Ah, December!  The month of office parties and corporate gatherings.  Small or large, every company feels obligated to do something: sandwiches from a nearby deli with soda in plastic cups, or formal cocktails and fancy dinners - whatever fits the budget (frequently, way over budget).

On Monday I had to take part in my client's festivities.  The company is small, but has a lot of external relations (bankers, financiers, big-time suppliers, shippers, brokers, lawyers, consultants).  So, the gathering turned out to be pretty significant.  As their acting CFO I am viewed as an insider and, therefore, was placed at the head of the "finance and legal" table.  Funny!  Other tables - operations, logistics, etc. were vividly mixed-gendered.  At my table - I was the only woman.

"But no matter, no matter!"  As all of us - females of corporate finance, I've been working in the predominantly testosterone environment my entire career.  I know how men operate and expect them eventually, after obligatory discussions of each other's success, politics, economy, and the stock market, to fall into a football patter.  And even though I myself find basketball and tennis far more exciting (and, as my readers know, prefer arts altogether), I am ready.  It's not really that difficult - here, in NYC, they are predominantly Giants' fans.  All it takes is to remember few key names and events, and they feel like you are "one of the boys." 

So, here we are, in the third hour of the event, with enough liquor in all of them to knock a team of stevedores to the ground (ever since the martini lunches have become their industry's long-gone past, the thirsty bankers make up for them in the evenings), when the Giants sneak their way into the conversation.  Only this time around, there is a twist - a politely contained and quiet tiff erupts over Eli Manning. 

You see, there is this guy, second from me on the left, in his early sixties, who looks like the Nazi who got the scepter's head burnt into his palm in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."  Only 30 minutes ago he said that the best presidential candidate right now was Michele Bachmann, which made me bit my tongue so hard to prevent a spontaneous response, I bled a little in my mouth.  Now he is arguing with other neighboring boys, telling them how much he hates Eli, and the way he sits on the side, and his smile, and his hat, etc., etc.  The fact that he is one of the only three Giants' players ever to be named a Super Bowl MVP apparently means nothing.

Let me tell you, I don't really give a rat's ass about either of the Manning brothers.  It's the underlying principle that's important to me.  So, I look the man in the eyes through his round glasses and say, "Many conservative men don't like Eli Manning, because he looks like a goofy high-schooler."  "Yes, and that stupid grin of his," says the man.  And I say, "But that look, and that grin, and that hat - they have nothing to do with his performance on the field."  The conversation ended right then and there.

More than a year ago, I finished my post "He Looks Like an Accountant..." by saying that young crowd at rock concerts don't believe that I am a career CFO.  The truth is that, unless I am introduced as one, nobody ever guesses it.  Moreover, there is always an element of surprise in people's reaction, when they learn about my profession.  It doesn't matter that I am very good at it and have a book on the subject coming out, I don't come off as "corporate finance," at least not by American standards.  I am not tall, not skinny; I don't have the fake gloss all over me.  And that crazy hair I could never tame!  I am acutely aware of this discrepancy with people's expectations.  That's why "CFO Techniques" doesn't have my picture on the back cover - I don't want to confuse people.

Quote of the Week: "What Do You Do?"

"If you were a member of Jesse James's band and people asked you what you were, you wouldn't say, 'Well, I'm a desperado.'  You'd say something like, 'I work in banks,' or 'I've done some railroad work.'  It took me a long time just to say 'I am a writer.' It's really embarrassing."

                                Roy Blount, Jr.

The Frustrated CFO comment:

The reason I think this quote belongs in this blog is not because I consider myself a writer.  No.  I find that it is just as difficult for financial executives of small companies to explain who they are, as it is for gangsters or for writers.  The general public is not very educated about organizational structures.  They associate the title of a CFO with sinister characters of newspaper articles targeting troubled public companies.   If you say, "I am a CFO," the next question is usually about the name of the company.  It's like they expect a household name in return.  People don't realize that there are millions of companies in this country.  And even less people understand the essence of the Controller's position.  So, when the new manicurist (plumber, mover, mechanic, taxi driver, etc.) asks the obligatory question, "What do you do?" many of us resort to answers like "Corporate finance," or something of the sort, in order to avoid additional explanations.  Who cares if the person you are talking to assumes right away that you work on Wall Street?  

No Tip Reciept: The Legal Obligations of a Waitress

A couple of weeks ago (I apologize for the delayed reaction) AOL Jobs featured a Claire Gordon's article about Victoria Liss, a waitress/bartender (the author called her both), who posted a copy of a customer's receipt on her Facebook page together with a photo of some guy who just happened to be the customer's double namesake.  She's done this in retaliation for a zero-tip and a note the customer wrote at the bottom, which basically amounted to a personal attack on her appearance.

The article has generated over 3500 comments.  If you scroll through them, you'll notice that most fall into two groups.  Those written by people, whose income at some point in their lives depended on tipping generosity, express compassion and support for Ms. Liss's being hurt by the "horrible" treatment; many share their own experiences of customers' "unfairness."  Others emanate the collective contempt towards the "obnoxious" expectations of tips by service industry professionals (especially in food and drink establishments), regardless of the quality of their work.  Many state that tips are essentially performance bonuses - a valid point I strongly uphold.

What surprises and worries me is that only a handful of commentators address the most important issue of the story - the illegality and immorality of Ms. Liss's act of publicizing the receipt to the whole world.  You see, it wasn't hers to use as she pleases.  A credit card receipt is a financial and legal instrument that binds together at least four entities: a credit card holder (customer), a credit card acceptor (merchant, in this case the restaurant as a legal entity and its owners), a credit card issuer (bank), and a payment clearance party (merchant service provider).  Do you see a waitress anywhere on this list?  With respect to the receipt, the server has a fiduciary duty to her employer to pass it to accounting.  That's it.  She was not supposed to copy it, take it out of her place of employment, or use it any other way.  Ms. Liss's actions violated the customer's personal rights to privacy and broke the fiduciary trust of her employer.   In addition, all those financial parties to the transaction are bound by the federal law to protect the credit card holders' privacy.   Ms. Liss exposed all of them to a possibility of civil legal actions and regulation censures.

Technically, every single party injured by Ms. Liss have rights to go after her: the customer, the poor innocent guy whose picture she posted, the employer, the merchant service provider, and the bank that issued the credit card.  At the very least, she should be fired.  And if I was in charge of Facebook's policy-making, I would close her account as well.  This has nothing to do with the freedom of speech - this is aiding in an illegal activity.             

Legal issues aside, what's up with the fact that she couldn't even remember the customer's face and got the wrong guy's picture?  Why nobody questions that?  

And I cannot help myself wondering about the other side of the story.  What prompted the customer to be so extreme?  Just your basic assholiness?  I doubt that.  Leaving no tip is one thing, but the text of the note may signify a reactive response to something that transpired beforehand.  Ms. Liss admits herself that her suggestion of fats multiplied by carbs was not welcomed by the guests.  What happened after that?  Did she walk away, mattering snide remarks about anorexia and bulimia?  You know, in that quite audible whisper, mastered so well by disgruntled service workers - the waitresses, the bartenders, the bank tellers, the park attendants, and so on, who hate their jobs and resent their customers.  At one point or another we all have been exposed to their passive-aggressive harassment.  Trust me, it can unbalance even the most stable of customers.     

Follow-Up to Dealing with Lawyers Post

Every empirical truth, even though is proven correct in most cases, has an exception.  Not all super-rich people are intellectual sadists, some celebrity children are actually incredibly talented and deserve to be where they are, some family businesses do not get ruined by subsequent generations, not all entrepreneurs are control freaks, not everything that Karl Pilkington says is innocent's wisdom, not all small businesses must be nurtured into survival, and for some young people the post-graduate degrees still may be the best alternative (those who consistently read my blog will know in which posts I've covered these issues, others may want to check them out in the archives).

And not all lawyers are made from the same dough.  There is a law firm that I've known for 15 years now that I really-really like.  Moreover, I try to work with them every chance I get.  I wanted to mention them as an exception that proves the rule in the original post on lawyers, but it came out too long and I don't like hurting the readers with oversize entries.  So, now they get their own separate honor post.

Zukerman Gore Brandeis & Crossman LLP was established in 1988.  In 1996 my CEO of the time and I were working on a $350-million annual contract with our largest supplier.  This was a young fast-growing entrepreneurial organization that did not have much of professional support prior to my arrival.  I wanted to bring into this deal sharp and hungry corporate attorneys to match our own hard-working ethics. 

When one of my networking contacts put me in touch with Nat Gore, I was instantly impressed (and that's a feat!) by his ability to cut straight into the heart of the matter.  It was like we were on the same intellectual wave.  Moreover, there were never any hints of arrogancy or disrespect.  This was especially impressive, considering that my boss was a suddenly very rich immigrant with terrible English.  Truth be told, even in New York City, there are plenty of xenophobes, but not these people.

As I always say, it's all about the quality of upbringing.  And these are cultured, well-mannered, smart as hell guys.  I never asked, but they probably got together because they had similar work ethics and attitudes.  But the most important thing is that they possess the quality that I highly treasure - they are experts.  Whatever I threw at them over the years - corporate agreements, venture capital investments, SEC inquiries, disputes with insurance companies, international taxation, foreign court testimonies, depositions - their handling of the matter was always superior and expedient.

Let me tell you, these are the only attorneys that I can rely on 100% and don't try to write documents for them.  Even though they are very fair: they are the only ones who will acknowledge that you wrote a good letter and there is nothing to add or subtract.

I am very happy that over the years they grew bigger and stronger: there is a total of 11 partners now, 3 attorneys of counsel, and 8 associates.  This Friday they are moving to brand new offices in that beautiful Eleven Times Square building.

Good luck to you at your new home, guys! 

CFO Folklore: Dealing with F@&ing Lawyers

As CFOs and controllers, we are constantly exposed to a variety of legal documents: security and financing agreements, leases, employment contracts, NDAs, new ventures formation, demand letters, term sheets, etc., etc.  And even though most of the financial professionals I know, including myself, are well-versed in these matters and can write a decent legal document themselves (hey, you cannot even get an MBA without taking Contractual Law), or at the very least can fully understand them, we are forced to deal with attorneys: a CEO feels more comfortable if he gets a bill. 

Hello!  This is business law.  We are not talking about defending anybody in court on murder or ponzi scheme charges, or suing somebody for fraud!  So, here is what usually happens.

Scenario 1:  I compose a document or construct an agreement outline addressing all necessary points, and send it to the corporate attorney.  He comes back with either, "This looks good," or he takes my points and, without changing anything, puts it into the format that he didn't even create himself - nowadays they all download templates from Blumberg's Law Products, which anyone can do.  A couple of weeks later I get a $2,000 bill.

Scenario 2: We receive a contract (let's say a Credit Line Agreement), I read it, make a long list of all the points that I believe need to be further negotiated with the bank, and send the contract with my list to the corporate attorney.  He comes back with, "I agree.  Let me know when it's ready for my final approval."  A couple of weeks later I get a $2,000 bill.

Ahhhhhh! 

Of course, there are special occasions when the intricacy of legalese needs to be explored and attorneys must be involved.  But, why the hell it's so intricate, anyway?  Doesn't it seem like a conspiracy to justify $450+/hour rates?  In organizational management we are always taught that some employees deliberately confuse their records to make themselves indispensable: nobody else can figure out what's going on.  Sounds familiar?

And the arrogance!  I can only think of one other profession that can compete with lawyers on the level of insolence - doctors.  They have no respect for anyone expect themselves.  Well, I am willing to forgive a cardiologist who has a courage to hold a human heart in his hands, or a neurosurgeon who may need to drill into my brain one day. 

But these legal MoFos?  The complex of knowledge I possess is far greater than that of any specialized attorney I know.  I ask, for example, if there are grounds for fiduciary violation in a case, and he ($550/hour) responds, "I have to look it up."  Yet, they dare to be condescending nevertheless!  Just last week a lawyer sent me a retainer agreement and wrote in the cover note, "It's a bit formal, but I hope you will understand it."  Are you fucking kidding me?!  I have four academic degrees and 20 years of executive experience (and he knows), and my own retainer agreement for consulting services, which I wrote myself, has more substance than your copied bullshit.

The worst thing about them, though, is that fucking professional camaraderie.  Try to talk to an attorney about a harm caused to you by another lawyer.  You think you are going to see fairness so wonderfully shown on "The Good Wife", or any other of those TV court dramas?  Nope!  They stop listening - THEY DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING ABOUT IT!  That's why ABA had to create grievance committees and appoint people who are obligated to review the complains, because otherwise there wouldn't be anybody you could tell about lawyers' violations.  Why do you think legal profession is not regulated by any government agency?  Because the legislature consists mostly of legal professionals.  They will never do anything against one another.

In "Philadelphia", just before dying, Tom Hanks (a gay attorney) tells Denzel Washington (another attorney who just won a discrimination case for him) an old joke: "What do you call a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean?  A good start."  They both like the joke.  Denzel's character even repeats it to someone else right away.  A very hopeful movie in many respects: the case is won, a formerly homophobic Mr. Washington's character finds in himself to defend a gay guy, AIDS-ridden Mr. Hank's character dies knowing he won, and his partner (played by Antonio Banderas) is somehow is not infected.  And the lawyers like the joke!!!  Very hopeful, very far from reality.