OSA NWO: Handling Attorneys

OFFICE OF SPECIAL AFFAIRS

28 February 1988

OSA Network Order No. 123¹

OSA NW
Execs
Legal Staff

Confidential
HANDLING ATTORNEYS
(Originally an LRH advice of 16 January 1980.)

I think I have gotten down to how come Legal is giving us trouble.

What is actually happening is that people on staff are dreaming up some sort of a category or solution and then asking attorneys to give an opinion on it. Of course the attorneys then give an expensive opinion but they are giving an opinion on an arbitrary.

This is not the way you handle Legal. You tell an attorney what the situations are that you are trying to handle and get suggestions from them as to how to go about this. Then you go over these various suggestions and choose the one they have offered that seems to fit the bill and okay that, and tell them to go ahead. Attorneys are people you use to solve your situations, not people you hand arbitraries to.

The difficulty is with handling attorneys.

Another approach is to know what you have to do or want to get done and you ask the attorney how to do this.

What is happening is that we have apparently developed a pattern of adopting some arbitrary category or solution and then getting an opinion on it from an attorney.

This won’t work as he is actually not solving problems.

Look this over and I think you will find other instances of it.

You speak of legal competence—well the handling of attorneys would increase that competence considerably.

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder

Notes