I think you’re quite right to be asking these questions (although I think your estimate of expected cost is significantly too low for many leaders and organizations).
A good lawyer (whose client is willing and able to pay for good advice) generally does not issue commands. They take time to understand the client’s interests, objectives, and tradeoffs and then provide professional advice explaining risks/tradeoffs to guide the client as to how to move forward. The choice of objectives belongs to the client as long as those objectives are lawful. Unfortunately, the client can’t tell the rest of the community about what risks were considered without blowing the attorney-client privilege and providing very valuable information to the other side.
The original comment is probably vague on the risk/benefit tradeoff in part because Tyler is not any organization’s lawyer and does not have the information needed to assess each organization’s risk specifically. I took his main point to be that non-lawyers would be prone to underestimate the various costs of speaking out, and that it wouldn’t be appropriate to draw any inferences from anyone’s decision not to do so. I don’t think he was trying to provide legal advice on whether anyone should speak out. The benefits of speaking out are non-legal benefits that are really for the client to weigh given its objectives, and have been discussed elsewhere at some length on this forum.
I think you’re quite right to be asking these questions (although I think your estimate of expected cost is significantly too low for many leaders and organizations).
A good lawyer (whose client is willing and able to pay for good advice) generally does not issue commands. They take time to understand the client’s interests, objectives, and tradeoffs and then provide professional advice explaining risks/tradeoffs to guide the client as to how to move forward. The choice of objectives belongs to the client as long as those objectives are lawful. Unfortunately, the client can’t tell the rest of the community about what risks were considered without blowing the attorney-client privilege and providing very valuable information to the other side.
The original comment is probably vague on the risk/benefit tradeoff in part because Tyler is not any organization’s lawyer and does not have the information needed to assess each organization’s risk specifically. I took his main point to be that non-lawyers would be prone to underestimate the various costs of speaking out, and that it wouldn’t be appropriate to draw any inferences from anyone’s decision not to do so. I don’t think he was trying to provide legal advice on whether anyone should speak out. The benefits of speaking out are non-legal benefits that are really for the client to weigh given its objectives, and have been discussed elsewhere at some length on this forum.