 | Clean as a whistle |
April-1-2015
| Lawyer | Neill May |
| Area | Corporate Finance and Securities |
Summary
Article originally published in the Canadian Lawyer Magazine, April 2015
Excerpt from "Clean as a whistle":
Casual team sports often work on a self-policing principle. For example, in pick-up basketball games, in the absence of a referee, players call fouls on themselves. Self-reporting in those cases, motivated by good sportsmanship, and perhaps peer and/or reputational discipline, generally seems to work pretty well. Now imagine for a moment that there were a financial reward for admitting a foul in those games. Perhaps the potential financial reward would be so large that it significantly exceeds the average player’s wealth or income. A typical game might start to look very different: a lot more penalty/foul calls, and a lot less actual sports activity. Players might start fouling each other before the game even starts (or at least claiming to have done so). And, for once, lawyers might get picked early when teams are selected (not bitter, just saying).
