I’ve been out of town for a time on a family road trip, with the attendant lack of posts. We saw elk, coyote, hot bubbling water, and cold falling water (a/k/a a ferocious rainstorm) in Yellowstone, saw Mt. Rushmore/Crazy Horse, swam in the Great Salt Yucky Lake, got depressed by Reno, watched a bear bathe in a nearby stream at Yosemite, experienced Mark Twain weather in San Francisco (“the coldest winter…”), and saw a mediocre production of Henry IV pt. 1 in Ashland, and did a whole bunch of driving — 4603 miles, to be exact. I think that equates to 9,206 bugs splattered on our windshield.

Gaming, Gambling, and Legal Project Management

The casino world insists that “gambling” be called “gaming,” trying to obscure the obvious — that the only sure winner is the house (the casino). Everyone else is tossing money away at various rates, with one oddball exception.

The laws of randomness are such that not everyone is on the negative side of the ledger all the time, especially when viewed through the short-term glasses of “this gambling session” or “this hour.”

Consider how that pattern is reflected in the context of legal efficiency. It’s certainly possible over the short term to be an inefficient project manager and do well against competing legal providers. Over the long term, however, you’re going to fall behind. Maybe you’ll have a huge spike in fees landing in your lap, just like the 1-in-38 chance that your number will come up in roulette. However, just as roulette pays off 36:1 for a 1:38 opportunity, most firms most of the time will be giving an advantage to the house, or in this case to their more efficient competitors.

The depressing part of Reno — and Vegas, etc. — is the number of people addicted to the machines and (perhaps less so) the tables. It would be one thing if they were joyous in their quest for the entertainment value and purported thrills of gambling, but the faces are almost uniformly slack.

Obviously, I’m a rationalist — I wouldn’t be in the project management business were I otherwise. I admit that I don’t “get” places like Reno and Vegas. I get no entertainment value in throwing money away in random patterns. My point is that I saw few others there who seemed like they were deriving entertainment either, let alone joy.

So if you don’t enjoy managing legal projects in a random manner, perhaps it’s time to get on the legal project management train. (Okay, a forced segue, but it’s my first day back at work….)

The one exception I noted above is poker, where you play against other players. The house takes a cut or fee, but it’s still possible for a good player to win regularly, since poker is as much about reading your opponents as it is about the cards you’re dealt. But there were hundreds of gamblers on the floor of the casinos we looked in on, between the don’t-have-slots-anymore slot machines and blackjack and roulette tables, but only five people — all with an astonishing collection of nervous tics trying to hide their “tells” — playing poker.

And no one playing baccarat in a tuxedo, which disappointed my wife, who’d previously seen casinos only in the movies.