An Essay by Seth C. Oranburg
Architects
of the Void
The Entrepreneurial Lawyer as Sub-Creator
“the earth was without form, and void”
The business lawyer is usually described as a transaction-cost engineer. This essay makes a different case: the entrepreneurial lawyer is a sub-creator, building a firm before it exists and under laws of its own, which is the part of the work artificial intelligence does not reach.
The essay reads firm formation through two traditions at once. Maimonides ranks the gift that ends a person's dependence above every lesser charity, and the firm is the institution that does exactly that. Tolkien calls the maker of a secondary world a sub-creator, and the lawyer who drafts the charter, the bylaws, and the deal is building a world that has to hold together under its own laws. Put side by side, they make a claim about what entrepreneurial lawyering is for, and about the part of it artificial intelligence does not reach.