[ktrnka]

Positive experiences - Patent lawyers at one company were just plain easy to work with, and took the time to explain why they were filing the patent a certain way. They didn't put too much burden on the inventors. Overall it wasn't much effort for me and my coworkers and I understood what was happening. I think they were company-internal lawyers - Having a contract lawyer review a basic contract for software development was a good experience - they were quick, professional, and responsive. I remember being uncomfortable doing remote contract review at the time (around 2015) and it's funny how the times have changed - Being prepared for a deposition was a good experience and they took the time to teach me a lot about how to disagree in a cooperative manner - Chatting with a contract lawyer about delays in signing deals was always useful and taught me a lot

Negative experiences - Patient lawyer consultant at another company was just ok, they put the burden of strategy on us and any time we asked for advice they would flip things around and ask what we wanted to do, but high-level direction wasn't enough for them - Legal team inside a previous company would swoop in out of nowhere and raise a stink about every little thing. When we included them early on projects, they'd take it as a sign to try and meddle with every little detail and often delayed projects or led to them being shelved indefinitely. It would've gone a lot better if they just spent time to make sure we were informed about legal risks enough to make tradeoffs, but they were pretty heavy handed. In later years it got worse when they started to step on PMs and other leaders toes about overall feature designs and product designs. Like things that didn't have legal implications at all.