This is the conundrum that we all face, which is somebody who actually cares about me and wants to help me and is living his values versus somebody who is trying to trick me and essentially steal from me and lie to me. Those two people, they sound the same. They use the same verbiage. They say the same things. And so people in this day and age try to filter a lot of what they're being told with disbelief, with a cynical attitude. And we have to find a way of embracing one another's humanity and not assuming the worst about the other person unless proven otherwise. And I know that's not what you would normally think a lawyer would say to you. But I got to tell you that the reason that I love. Yeah. What I do. The reason I enjoy coming to work in the morning is that I feel that I am solving other people's problems that they cannot solve themselves. That was the voice of Gary Dean Nissenbaum. And this is the second part of my interview with Gary. Gary is a lawyer. He works almost exclusively now with digital products. People who are creating products that are in the software. Space. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. This is developer T. And my goal is to help driven developers connect to their career purpose so that they can positively impact the people they have influence over. And this introduction kind of discussion that Gary and I were having speaks to that ideal, the ideal that I am walking in to my job and helping people that don't know how to do what I know how to do. And that I can help them in a way that they don't have to be cynical about the work that I'm doing and I don't have to be cynical about their perspective of me. This is an ideal working scenario. And I recommend to you that you seek out situations. You seek out opportunities to work with that holistic reality in mind. The idea that you can work without having to be on opposing sides from your client. At the same time, you may find yourself bringing yourijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijij your career purpose. The interview week prep guide, you can find it at beyondbootcamp.io. It's totally free and it's going to walk you through exercises that help you uncover your own purpose. It's going to help you uncover your strengths and it's going to walk you through the process of connecting that purpose and those strengths to the company that you're going to interview with. Go and check it out. Again, it's beyondbootcamp.io and it's totally free. And I can't wait to hear stories from people who are reading this and then going to interviews and using the ideas, the resources that I've provided there, as well as some of the recommendations, some of the practical tips. Hopefully those things are helpful, even if it's helpful only at like a 5% level, right? If it makes you 5% more likely to become hired, then isn't it worth that extra click? It's totally free. So it's not like, you know, it's not like there's... There's a big monetary barrier. And I do that because I know that there are developers out there who have been able to, up until this point, build their career off the backs of open source, right? So this idea is to open up this information and to try to encourage developers to connect to this soft skills stuff, in addition to the hard coding skills that you already have. Again, last time, beyondbootcamp.io. Thanks again for listening. Let's jump into the interview with Gary D. Nissenbaum. Somebody starts a consulting business to, let's say, do website or app development or something similar. What should they do? Should they have a corporation? Should they have a limited partnership or a regular general partnership? Should they have a limited liability company? If they have a corporation, should it be a C corporation, an S corporation? These terms, are confusing. And it's very hard to get a straight answer from people. And so what you generally do is you go to your friend, you see what they did, and you just duplicate it. The fact is, I'll give you a quick example of why those are different. A limited liability company will give you liability protection with pass-through income. So on the one hand, you're being protected to some extent from a lawsuit. But at the same time, the money passes through the company. And so you're being protected from a lawsuit. And so you're being protected from bringing your name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and name and applying this to any particular state or any particular situation. People should consult a lawyer of their choosing. They shouldn't rely on anything that I'm saying. Now, having given you that disclaimer, a corporation, a C corporation, you're paying corporate business tax generally. But why would somebody then have a C corporation versus an LLC? Well, I'll give you a quick answer. What if you're trying to have investors and you want to sell them shares of stock? There's no shares of stock in an LLC. If you want to someday go public, an LLC generally does not go public. A corporation does with shares. So again, there's all these different nuances and you can't really pull that, at least not easily, from a website. Another example of that is, what does somebody do when they're leaving their current employer? Are they allowed to compete? Well, the first thing I say is take a look. Well, look at what you signed when you took the job. And is there a non-compete clause in there? Well, maybe there is. So it doesn't mean you can't compete. What it means is somebody has to evaluate that non-compete clause. So let me just give you one example of some of the problems there. I can't tell you how many non-compete clauses I review when people want to start businesses and they say, am I allowed to do this? I look at their non-compete clause from their may not service any other customers such that he would be in competition with me, with the current employer. So the former employee cannot be in competition with the former employer. So a layperson looking at that would say, okay, that's pretty clear, I can't compete. But I look at it, or a lawyer looks at it, and the lawyer knows that, generally speaking, the case law throughout the United States says that the purpose of a non-compete, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never can beat a stifled competition. That's not the purpose. And if you say that in the language, if it says we're doing this for the purpose of you not competing with me, that may make it invalid. It may make it invalid. The purpose of it should be to protect the property interest, legitimate property interest of the employer, not to stop competition. So that's an example of something you wouldn't know. So in other words, they can't take that IP and take it directly to someone who is, you know, they've invested a lot of time. They trusted this employee that the employee has some information that has been, you know, it's not something that the employee brought to the company. It's something that the company has invested in and they can't take that IP and just, you know, wholesale hand it over to their new company just because they want to. That's another good example. The example I'm giving is about taking customers, taking clients. Your example though is- Oh, okay. I'm glad you said that because that's the next thing, which is, did you sign a confidentiality agreement? And how broad is it? And is it covering things that are trade secrets? That's one thing. Or is it covering the things that you need in order to practice your profession at all? In other words, the thing a developer just needs to do to be a developer because if it's overly broad, it can be scaled back. There's a concept in the law called the blue pencil. And when I say that, you'll see a blue pencil. I mean, we're going back decades, right? If not centuries. And basically what it means is that a court will look at one of these non-competes or confidentiality agreements and such. And if they have an anti-competitive effect or they're unconscionable, the court will not necessarily invalidate it. What the court will do is modify it, like blue pencil it. And so again, these are not things that are intuitive that you would automatically know. It's something that you can do. And so, you know, I think that's a good example. I think that's something that you really need to go to a lawyer who practices in this area to really understand what your rights are. But having said that, what the law is trying to do in a broad sense is it's trying to foster competition. It's trying to foster capitalism. It wants people to be able to move around and do their thing. Yeah. Yeah. Because the system only works when you have two people who are racist. And so, you know, it's not just a law that you can do. It's a law that you need to adopt. And so, you know, I think that's something that you need to consider. And, you know, there's very politically charged words, obviously, when we start talking about commerce and capitalism and all of the other things that go with it. But if you just strip it back to its basic concept, if I have two or three people and I put them in a room and I say, hey, you know what, I want you to come out with a very good thing, and I give them no incentive, right, I just say, I just want you to do something good. Well, it's very unlikely, that I'm going to end up with something really particularly good because people are not very good at just self-motivating. Instead, we have this basic human concept of incentive. We have a basic human concept of survival, right? These are core to who we are. And so if you put them in the room and you say, hey, there can only be one winner and the winner gets $100, how much better of a result are you going to get, right? So this idea is quite simple that, hey, you know what? We've actually found that that competition, it's not about beating people over the head with, you know, I'm better than you. That's not what this competition is about. Healthy competition is about leveling the entire whole, right? So adding value to the market as a total market, not just adding value to an individual company. Well, you know, the way I look at it is capitalism, the sense of business competition is the accelerator in the car. The court system and the regulatory system are the brake. Now, I think the point that's been made in our political dialogue is that, you know, you don't want to always hit the brake because the car will eventually stop. So that's not good. On the other hand, from the other side of the spectrum, if... All you do is hit that accelerator, you're going to get into an accident pretty quick. And so it's the concept of balance, the fact that the court system, in my view, is there to create balance so that the system is not moving out of control, that there is some kind of understanding that contracts need to be formed. But there are occasions when contracts need to be broken. There's no right or wrong about that. It's not like you're an evil person, if you break a contract. However, there should be compensation. And so the law literally, and I know this is another concept that might not be counterintuitive, but it's an important one for your audience, is that every law student learns in the first semester of law school that there are two regimes of laws in America. There is contract law, which is the formation and the breach of contracts. And then there's injury law, where people are creating injuries, not just personal injury. There can also be injury by virtue of stealing somebody's intellectual property or taking a trade secret. The concept, though, is that the first one, contract law, you can breach a contract and there's no punishment for that. The courts will not say that you did anything evil or wrong. The courts will simply try to reorient the compensation to the person who suffered because you breached the contract will be duly compensated. Whereas, if somebody intentionally severs a right, takes intellectual property, grabs trade secrets, steals intellectual property, things like that, that person needs to not just compensate. That person, if it's intentional, may need to be punished. We call it punitive damages. Right. And so these are sort of the concepts where, on the one hand, you have a regime of laws that are simply there to be the referee in the rough and tumble of a capitalist business society. And then the other is a court is there to protect victims. And they're just two different concepts that work in parallel. Yeah. And the reality is, if you're not careful with any system, including the court, including law, there's going to be someone who takes it and finds the edges, finds a way to turn it into a weapon. Right. And so, you know, there's going to be someone who takes it and finds the edges, you know, this is why it's important to, as a developer, as a company, as a business owner, it's important to think about, you know, to hedge yourself against that kind of threat. Because if you end up in a scenario where you have put in, you know, endless amounts of work, and you didn't protect yourself, right? You didn't take the time, for example, to create a simple paper trail, which can go a long way. And even things that you would have an intuition for, that could be wrong, like things that you think are protecting you, but actually have no protection value whatsoever. If you're in that position, then it would only make sense for you to take the time to go and talk to somebody like Gary, and figure out, okay, you know what, where am I possibly vulnerable that I haven't even thought about? That's right. And I'll give you a great example of the concept you were just alluding to. Cybersquatting. Let's just talk for a moment. About cybersquatting. You know, you're talking about someone having a trademark, some kind of proprietary right in a mark. And then someone else unrelated to them, who creates a domain, using that trademark in a way that confuses, that makes the public think that it's theirs, not the person that actually owns it. The law will not allow somebody to register a domain name that incorporates a family name. As long as they have a bad faith intent to profit from it. But here's the thing. Domain registration is not a legal process through the court system. Domain registration is done through other worldwide agencies, I'm sure that you're familiar with, that basically make this whole system work. So the court system is saying you cannot use the domain registration to, take somebody's rights in their trademark, which is a system of statutes and laws and judicial enforcement. And so the point is that, again, you have in commercial law, what you have in the law that applies to developers generally, to developers who are starting their own businesses, to developers who have to worry about intellectual property rights. You're really talking about a regime of laws that where you're acting as a referee, where you're basically saying, people are going to step on other people's, people's toes all the time. That's a bad thing, but we're going to figure out a rational, reasonable way to, to, to fix it without the two companies destroying one another. And that's the benefit of using the legal system in a way that's positive and constructive to, to resolve a dispute without destruction. Yeah, that's, that's a very good kind of summation. And, you know, what you said, you said something earlier, that was so inspiring to me. I love this idea that, you know, you walk into work and you're, you're empowered by the concept that you're actually helping people do something that they couldn't do there on their own. And what, what people may not realize is that either they're setting themselves up for their own destruction or they're participating in the destruction of another company, right? Because they're not paying attention to, you know, how they're, how they're going about doing something, right? Well, part of it, part of it is also that people don't want to upset others and they don't want to make enemies. So a lot of times someone is doing something where they're really going off the rails. I mean, they are taking a very, very risky strategy, doing something they really should not do. That's going to go to a bad place, but the people around them have no interest in, in telling them that because they know they're going to get a bad reaction. They know this person wants to do it. I, and the, and the people who work with me here, uh, Nissenbaum Law Group, we are constantly in the position of telling people what they don't want to hear. And, and in a funny way, a lot of what I do all day is basically telling people what they don't want to hear and getting people to do what they don't want to do. And it's not that I do it in any coercive way. I have no power to coerce them to do anything. These are people I serve. They're my clients, but it's more along the lines of, I may be the only one in their lives who doesn't have a vested interest in pleasing them, but instead has a vested interest in protecting them. Right. And so I will give them tough love. I have no issue telling them that what you're doing is dangerous. Here's the reason. Here's what's going to happen. However, here's another solution. Here's another way of going. And I add that because, you know, it doesn't take a bright bulb, let's say, to be able to say, no, any, anybody can say no, that doesn't take a lot of education or a lot of, a lot of acumen, a lot of experience. But the idea of saying no, but you can do it this way or no, but here's the risk. And I'm going to give you three alternatives. They're all at various stages of risk. That, that is the real, in my opinion, practice of law where you're, you're not destroying deals. You're rescuing deals. You're preventing them from going off the rails. You're preventing them from going over a cliff. I can't tell you how many times I hear people say, you know, I will not bring a lawyer in to a transaction until the last minute because lawyers screw up deals. Lawyers are always there to say, no, it's not accurate. It's not accurate. It's like saying, you know, doctors are, are, are fixated on disease. Doctors love disease. So I'm not going to go to the doctor because if I go to the doctor, he'll tell me I'm sick. If I don't go, then I don't have to hear that I'm sick. I mean, the point is you go to a lawyer who can, who can tell you, who can tell you a way out of a situation that you don't even know you're in half the time. And that's really what our goal is. Yeah. And that happens with, you know, there's, there's a lot of developers who are listening to this right now and you are in a freelancing situation where you have avoided difficult conversations with your client. Like for example, signing just a normal contract, even if it's a boiler plate, a very simple agreement, you didn't want to sign it because of some, someone once told you down the line at some point that signing a contract or presenting a contract is dangerous. You might lose the client because of what it communicates. It communicates that you don't trust them or it communicates, you know, that you want to be rigid or that you're, you're out to, you know, pin them down. And the reality is those contracts, when they're written well, and when they're presented tactfully, and those contracts, those are important. Don't get me wrong. The, the, the important piece here is not only the contract, but how you present it. But if you don't have that stuff, right, if you're not paying attention to those things, then you almost certainly at some point in your freelance career will get taken advantage of by people who otherwise are well-meaning. Right. Well, let me give you an example of that. And I want to get away from some of the more technical things that we've been talking and talk about another level to this. Let's talk about, let's talk about when developers are working as independent contractors and they're bidding on work. You're bidding on work and you're signing on that. You're going to create a website. You're going to create an app. You're going, it's going to have certain functionality. Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about two things. Number one, how did you describe what success looks like? What you have to do to finish this contract and be done with it? Because of what you said is I'm going to do, I'm going to create a website. And it will have the functionality that you need to perform what you want to do in your business. You're signing on to something that may be perpetual. And right. Endless. And it may be that you did it for a flat fee and that flat fee is used up and you're still working there. And then if, if five years from now, it needs to be renovated, you're still working there. And it, it's one of these things where there's an art form to how you describe in a bid document or in a, a contract with a customer exactly what it is you will and will not be doing on that flat fee arrangement. And when you go billable and also hourly billable and when you can pull out, and when you can give up on the contract, that's number one. Let me get just quickly give you a number two source code. How many of these customers who, who obtain, let's say web website development from a, a, a developer realize that or, or believe that they are, they are literally owning all the code, everything that was used for that website. They own the source code. They own the open source code. They, they basically have, they have a complete product because what they see is they see the graphics on a screen. Well, you know, how many of them really understand that the developer is keeping, keeping some of that code and is able to use it in other jobs? How many of them? And, and if they don't understand that, are we going to be in a lawsuit? How many of them realize that they're, that some of this was open source. And if it's open source, it's subject to the conditions of that open source software. And what people think of in the lay public, of course, your audience knows the difference, but in the lay public, we think, well, open source means free. There's no restriction. I can do whatever I want with it. It's absolutely untrue. There are all sorts of conditions on, on open source software that you have to be very, very careful when you, when you have, when you have the open source concept, but to read the terms and conditions, to be sure that you're not using it in some way that, that, that, that, that is going to violate that license. So those, those are two things that I think we have to sort of educate. Let me put it this way. Your audience needs to educate their own customers through perhaps an attorney who's drafting the document in a way that makes this clear. Today's episode is sponsored by fuse. And before we get into talking about what fuse does, I want to go ahead and tell you that fuse is offering you a 70% discount on their premium product. This is a brand new thing that fuse has announced. Now, if you don't know what fuse does, if you've ever tried to develop a product, develop a mobile application using the traditional tools like Xcode or Android studio, then you know that it can be a little bit of a pain. And those tools really haven't changed very much in 10 years or so. Fuse is trying to change that reality for you. They're create, they've created a tool that allows you to focus on collaboration rather than writing a bunch of code. And the platform works on both Mac and PC. It's an all in one solution. And they've just gone from their beta to their official, 1.0 launch. This is a huge deal. They've alongside this, they've released fuse studio, which is their premium editor. This comes along with the premium plan. This is the paid plan from fuse. A fuse even tells us that you are very likely to be able to get by on the free plan. So there's no cost in getting started up. You can try this out totally for free. Head over to fuels, tools.com slash plans. Now, if you use the code D T and you do decide to, to upgrade to that premium plan, which by the way, it has some excellent tools, some built in UI, really sophisticated things that fuse has done with her premium plan. If you do decide to go to that premium plan, use the code D T and you'll get 70% off for the next year. Not just a month of, of a 70% off as a whole year of 70% off again, use the code D T and you have to use that code by December 31st of 2017. Thank you. So much to fuse for sponsoring today's episode of developer T. I, you know, I try to listen to what I think developers are going to be saying when they're listening to this episode. Uh, there is a group of, there's two groups of developers I want to address right now, uh, in response to the, uh, to the, you know, establishing your, your contract and very clear terms about what you're going to do and what you're not going to do. And, uh, you know, you mentioned the, the language, um, uh, you know, talking about, okay, I'm going to build you a site that helps you accomplish the goals of your business and how that can end up in an endless work cycle. So there's two groups of developers. The first group is the group that already has done that. And you're on the other side and you've learned from pain, right? You've learned from a very difficult and sometimes toxic situation, or sometimes not even toxic, but it ended up ruining the relationship that once was actually very good. You had a great relationship with this client and unfortunately things went off the rails because expectations were not set out clearly. So the other group is the other group I want to address is the group of people who think that the people you're working with would never do that to you because they're good people. Now here's the problem with this perspective. You may be a hundred percent correct about those people being good, kind. And they don't intend to take advantage, of you. They don't necessarily intend, you know, to, to work you to the bone. The problem is when you, when you don't have clarity of expectations, right? Then it doesn't matter what somebody's intentions are. It doesn't matter how good you think these people will treat you. All that matters is what you promise to do versus what they're asking you to do. And if there's a disparity there, if there's, if there's, if there's, if there's a lack of clarity there, then you walk in not knowing when you're going to walk out. That's exactly right. And, um, a great deal of lawsuits that could be brought are not brought because the people involved have a good relationship and they're willing, they're willing to overlook things that are not integral to their business and to their, their goals and objectives, uh, mistakes, accidents, things, uh, Uh, no harm was meant there. There are many, many situations like that. And, and the reverse of that, which is what you're talking about, which is you have someone who, um, has a, a rather minor, uh, grievance, something that's not really hurting them in any meaningful way, although it does state some sort of cause of action. And, um, and they are just going full tilt because they feel that they have been disrespected, that they feel that they have been disrespected. They have not, they're just not, they've not been treated well and this is their way of getting back. Yeah, it is a very emotional thing, right? That's right. And so a lot of what I do as a lawyer is I try to understand the emotional valence of what's going on, not just with my own client, but with the other side. And I try to understand that, not so much so that I can tell the client to immediately settle their dispute and this is ridiculous. I find that that doesn't work because when people are not ready to do that, they don't hear it, they're not ready to hear it. It's a useless exercise that basically, and I may not even be right about it. It may be that something that I'm looking at and I say this is ridiculous. It turns out it's very important. To that person, I just don't understand completely their industry and what's going on. So I need to be humble in the sense of I don't, I can't think for you. I'm not living your life. If you need to go forward with this, I will help you do that. But on the other hand, at various points, I'll sit somebody down privately and ask them if they think they want to settle it. Ask them if they want me to reach out to the other side, you know, and kind of give them the upside and the downside. And. And not make the decision for them, but see what they want to do. And I find that that approach seems to work better. These disputes sort of have their own half-life. And there's a point at which they should resolve and generally do, but not always. And part of my job is to spot that sort of area where people can come together and then bring them together if they want to be brought together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned the word humble. And this is actually an episode I did recently about what it takes to be a great developer. And one of the traits of a great developer is rational humility. Okay. So the concept of combining these two words, rational humility, really what it means is recognizing very tangibly and even just statistically that you're going to end up failing. And there's going to be a lot left for you to learn at the end of every single day of your life. Right. At the end of every single project that you involve yourself on, at the end of every single client interaction, there's something that you very well could be wrong about. Right. And this is such a key factor to growth and to becoming better at what you do in general. And I really love that you brought up that point that, hey, you know, I may not be able to know exactly what needs to happen in every scenario. And this is true. This is one of the drivers, I think, of cynicism for developers. People who are involved in tech have an. I think an unusual amount of cynicism about clients and about the world around them. And I think part of the reason for this is because quite simply, it's a lack of humility and recognizing that, hey, you know what? I don't actually know everything that's going to happen with your product. Right. I don't know your customer as well as you do. Well, let me let me give you an example of that. You know, there's one of one of the things that fortunately our culture and our society has moved away from. Thankfully, is this. Is. It's untrue concept that if somebody does not speak. The language. Well, if they speak English, but in a broken language or broken English or there's some sort of issue with an accent that somehow they're not as bright as somebody not intelligent. And thankfully, we've gotten away from that. And there's and obviously not only is it not true, but there's been so many examples where that that that is not not true at all. And and so it's the same thing with professions. You know, when when you come to a lawyer and we're using words that you don't understand, if you sit there and you don't want to sound stupid, so you don't want to ask, hey, what does that word mean? What does that word mean? I don't understand what you just said. And instead, you just sort of nod your head with a with a, you know, the smile. And it sounds and it looks like you understand what I'm talking about, but you don't want to feel or look silly or stupid. You're doing yourself a disservice. And it's not the way that you. You should work with a professional. And as a matter of fact, I'll go even further. I think that a professional, a lawyer, a doctor, a CPA, a money manager has an obligation to check in with you and say, listen, there's no such thing as a stupid question. The only question that's stupid is the one you don't ask me. And please ask me to explain something. And frankly, the way I view what I do is if if I explain it to you and you don't understand what I just said, it may very well be. That I'm the problem that that I need to figure out a better way of explaining it. And so that challenges me. You know, it's right. Again, it doesn't take somebody that bright to just regurgitate what they learned in graduate school. That's just memorization. The the the the challenge is to step back, understand the big picture and explain it in a simple way to give you the macro concept. And only from there, move to the micro and get into the verbiage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. of bells here for listeners because we talk about that same exact concept on the show, understanding, becoming an expert in communications, not just knowing a little bit about it, but becoming truly an expert at it. That's a hallmark trait of people who are incredibly good at what they do, right? This is true of lawyers. This is true of developers. It's true of every profession, almost every profession, particularly knowledge-based professions, is if you can communicate what you've learned, if you can communicate what you're going to do, if you can communicate an idea, then that idea becomes powerful, right? It doesn't have power if it's just locked up in your brain. Ironically, the area in which I do the most of that is in SEO, in how I market my website, how I'm able, to market my services. I may have one line or two lines of print that will come up on a Google search, and it has to convey this incredibly complicated concept of why you should hire me as your lawyer. I mean, that's not a simple thing to explain in maybe 20 words. And so, what's interesting is that the digital world, again, has forced me to learn to explain complicated things. And so, I've learned to learn to explain things in very short bursts of language, which is not what I was trained to do. It's a different approach. Now, you can take it to the extreme, and everything's a tweet on Twitter, and that doesn't work. But my point is that the idea of brevity, the idea of going to someone who doesn't know you, doesn't know your profession, and doesn't even want to, and explain to them how you can be of service to them, that is a part of being human. It's part of understanding that your humanity and their humanity are equivalent, regardless of who has the graduate degree, or who speaks the same language, or who does the same thing. We're equivalent. We're the same. We're coming from the same place. And if we can hold on to that, and I will tell you, just to wrap that up, that the law actually acknowledges that. There's something called alternate dispute resolution, which is a concept that came about maybe 20 to 25 years ago, and it really took hold. And that concept was that the idea of an adversarial court system, where people are hitting each other over the head, and having a judge kind of break up the fight, and then make a choice, or a jury do that, that that didn't work in every case, and that there's another way. And so, this concept of mediation, the concept of people who are trained to understand the law, and to be able to do that, that's a concept that I've learned to hold on to. Understand both sides. Understand the emotion going on. Separate everybody, put them in different rooms, and then shuttle back and forth, and see if you can come up with a point of convergence. And then settle the dispute in a way that both sides are unhappy with, but they begrudgingly can accept. That's sort of the definition of a good settlement. And that has taken hold in a way that's unbelievable. In fact, if you're really interested in this, go on Google, and look up something called collaborative law. That is the next stage after mediation. It's something that I've often thought could be applicable to commercial law, but it really hasn't taken hold. It's really something that has been focused on in divorce. It's a different area. And the idea of collaborative law, not to get into all of it, but this is cutting edge. And it's something that began, I think, in California, and has moved around the country in divorce situations. It's that you give complete and total disclosure. You tell the story, and you give complete and total disclosure. And you give complete and total disclosure. And you give complete and total disclosure. And you give a commitment not to mislead. And you sit down in good faith. And that's why it does so well with the right couple in a divorce situation. So take a look at that if you're interested in this area. It's sort of where the law is moving. Yeah, that's a very good idea. I think one of the things that's happening in business, and particularly for developers, we're seeing more and more people working at a lot of these things. And I think that's a very good idea. kind of lone guns, right? Lone hires, freelancing, however you want to look at it, effectively, very small and usually solo outfits. And sometimes it's one and two or three people. And this has been common. I mean, small business is a common thing. Most businesses are small businesses, just by a simple factor of statistics, right? But on top of that, you're starting to see small companies taking on much bigger jobs. And so because we have a lot of small companies, it's almost like component companies coming together with their various expertise and collaborating on projects. That is a very interesting concept of matching the law to that same, overlaying the law on that same concept. It's going to be very interesting to see where our nation is going, essentially, in this. Is the digital world, is the world of information technology going to show the American culture a different way of interacting that is not as adversarial, that where you have, it's not a zero-sum game, that you don't have a winner and a loser. Is there some way that by adopting some of these concepts of collaboration, some of these concepts of joint venturing, you know, the very fact that there is an internet, but no one owns it. The fact that there are so many people, this is another thing the lay public doesn't really understand, but your listeners do. There are so many people who enhance the integrity and strength of the internet. And if they were going to want to do this, they could destroy those junctions that are used for the internet. They could slow everything down, quite the opposite. They sort of have a humanitarian, authoritarian approach, an approach where there's a lack of ownership, but you're doing this for the world, this whole idea of freedom of information. You know, I wonder sometimes if this digital world is going to be the way out from some of the rancor that we have seen in other industries and frankly, in our public discourse. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Very, very big topics and certainly things that we're going to see in the future. I mean, I think it's going to be a very big evolution of evolution, bringing evolution and evolution and evolution and evolution and all the way down to our daily jobs, but also all the way up to national level policy and international policy even. All of this is going to change the way we do everything, the way we do business, the way you work. Gary, it's already changing. It's already changing right before our eyes. So Gary, thank you so much for your time today. I do have two more questions that I'd like to ask everyone who comes on the show. And I think they're going to be excellent questions to ask you as well. The first question that I like to ask is if you and I were to go and have a cup of tea or coffee and sit down and talk for the first time, what would you hope that I would ask you about? I would hope that you would ask me about what things I have gained over the years being an attorney that have, changed so that the attorney I was when I got my law degree at the age of 26 and the attorney that I am now is different. What have I learned over the years that my practice of law has changed? Because I think I have learned things and I think that's part of hopefully being humble in my profession and understanding that I can always improve. Yeah, that's great. Is there a thing, a specific thing maybe that you can share, very quickly before we wrap this thing up? Absolutely. When I was in my mid-twenties and I was first a lawyer, whenever I would be assigned work by the person I worked for at that time, a litigation, I would look at it and I would say, this is silly. These people should settle. And I would call my client and say, listen, I got a great settlement. Let's get this. Let's just settle this thing and then get the other side in the room. And what I found was that by doing that too early, by doing it when, when I wanted to do it, as opposed to listening to the client and listening to the adversary and understanding the subtlety, the humanity, what's going on between them, I would get a bad settlement essentially. Not horrible. I mean, it was always a reasonable settlement, but I could have done something better when I look back and I say to myself, you know, a lot of this is encouraging the client toward the goal, but not forcing that goal. And that, that has helped me a lot in, in, in the way I work with my clients. I work for them and toward their interest. They don't have to accommodate me. Yeah. Wow. Wow. That's such, such an interesting insight. And that experience is something that I think a lot of people share. You know, it's obviously I'm not doing settlements, but I, I, I do realize that there are times when my intuition about the outcome of something, it doesn't even matter if it's correct or not. Right. I have that same intuition, that first initial assumption that, Hey, you know what? This is kind of silly, right? They don't need that. They need this. They shouldn't use that tool. They should use this one. And if I try to jump ahead, or if I try to make that conclusion too quickly, then I'm skipping the mental processes and I'm skipping the, the exploration and discovery that they have to go through to get on the same page as me. That's right. And I'm trying to jump ahead in the story. You learn that in life generally. And it just doesn't work. You learn that in relationships. You know, you, you learn that in, in every aspect of the world in which you interact with other people. It's just that as a lawyer, it's more difficult to learn it at the outset because law school is not necessarily giving you those psychodynamics. It's not really giving you those tools. And, but over the years, through trial and error, and I got to say, by watching, my clients run their businesses with modern techniques of management and dealing with people I have learned. I learned from my clients and I learned other ways of handling things. And, you know, there's an old saying that as you get older, you get less smart, which means I'm less certain that I know everything. Right. Somehow that's better. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. That's even better. Yeah. You know more about what you don't know. Yes. That's true. So, and, and this excellent, excellent answer to that question. The second question that I like to ask everyone who comes on the show is, if you had just 30 seconds to give some advice to developers of all backgrounds and experience levels, what would you tell them? What I would tell them is to read what you sign, which also means read what you agree to by clicking. I agree. When you access a website, when you access an app, when you take on a job, don't just sign something because somebody puts it in front of you and looks at you as if you have three heads because you actually want to read it. Don't let yourself be intimidated into signing something that you're only going to really read once something goes wrong. And now you need to either enforce your rights or you need some or somebody is going to enforce their rights against you. That's not the first time you should be reading the contract that you just signed. Yeah. Oh, it's very good advice. And hopefully it'll keep some people who are listening out of some trouble that they otherwise would have been in. Gary, thank you so much for your time. Where can people go and learn more about what you do and, and learn about how they might be able to engage you? The best way is my website. It's a G D N L A W.com G D N law.com. We have a wealth of information on there about internet law and, um, intellectual property law and all the other areas that we practice in. So please visit our website there and, uh, I hope that it's helpful to you and thank you very much. You're, you have been a tremendously, uh, really terrific resource for developers throughout the years. And, uh, I've heard of your web, your, your, your podcast before. It's excellent. And if anything, this interview was just done so well and, and you just did a great job. So thank you for making this really a pleasant experience. Thank you, Gary. Take care. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of developer T. Thank you again to Gary D Nissenbaum. Of course you can find Gary's law firm at G D N law.com. That's G D N law.com. Thank you again to Gary for sharing all of the insights and the personal stories with us. And thank you for listening to developer T this show wouldn't exist without you. And it only exists so that it can serve, driven developers and help them connect to their career purpose. I want to inspire you to connect to that purpose and always be striving, uh, to become a better developer so that you can better accomplish that purpose. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to fuse for sponsoring today's episode of developer T fuse is an all-in-one solution. That's going to help you write less code and focus more on collaboration, focus more on the outcome of your application, how to refuse, how to get started. And remember the code D T will get you 70% off their premium plan for an entire year. Fuse tools.com slash plans. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. One more thing, no matter what stage you're at in your career, if you think that you could benefit from connecting better to your own purpose and really everyone can, but specifically if you're a driven developer, in other words, if you can, if you can share about your career beyond just, you know what your title is, then I want you to take two action steps today. The first one is to, to go to beyond bootcamp.io and download the interview week prep guide. Here's a little pro tip. It's not just for interviews. There is some interview specific stuff in there, but you can skip over that and still get a lot out of this interview week prep guide. It's about a hundred pages long and those pages are going to go really quick. It's in kind of a, kind of an outline format and I really think you're going to love it beyond bootcamp.io. And the second thing I want you to do is to open up your podcast app, whatever app this episode is playing in right now and subscribe to developer T. Of course, only if you enjoyed these episodes, if you didn't enjoy these episodes, then I wouldn't ask you, ask you to subscribe, but if you did enjoy them and if you think this is going to help make you a better developer, then subscribing helps. First of all, it helps you, uh, be reminded whenever new episodes come out and there's a ton of new episodes of developer T coming out all the time. We have three episodes a week right now, so it's easy to get behind. The second reason I want you to subscribe is because this helps other developers find the show. So if it's been helpful to you, then maybe it would be helpful to another developer. 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