Dumb and Dumber

Just when I thought I had seen all the dumbest things, along comes something even dumber.

We were going through the revisions suggested by the judge in the separation agreement. The amounts are from their legal pads transcribed to Excel. In addition to all the errors I mentioned previously, he made a new one today. While copying the numbers from the spreadsheet and inserting them into the separation agreement, he forgot one.

We were nearly done with a 45 minute review and he finally noticed it was missing. Of course it was a glaring error, it meant that after some equalizing property transfers, I owed my wife nothing. He forgot her separate property contribution to the house, $12K that I owed her.

I honestly think that if he hadn't caught it, my wife's lawyer, who is even worse at math, wouldn't have caught it either, she just wants to cut and run.

Honest mistake ? No stupid mistake !

Spreadsheets were meant to prevent errors and to group common items. The first rule of accounting is no commingling of funds. There is a reason why they are so anal about that, it makes it easy to screw up. He had a column for separate property, fine, but he did not distinguish between separate property owed vs already in that person's procession. The $12K contribution was owed. Columns on a spreadsheet are cheap. If he had not commingled owed vs controlled the $12K would stick right out. You simply tally all owed separate property into the final totals. He didn't. He was remembering to copy it.

How did I catch it? Simple, I got a copy of his .xls file and used that as input, then made a new sheet with formulas from his input. As he changed his "non-formula" sheet, my sheet continued to calculate. I also use the auditing toolbar to trace formulas to ensure they are including all relevant input.

My 2nd grade son is using Excel in school, producing bar and pie charts. Why can't someone charging $300 / hour do that?

But here's the best part, I couldn't help myself, after he found his error, I said, "I'm sorry I have accepted the agreement as you presented, I don't agree with that change." I was being somewhat sarcastic and I wanted him to understand the gravity of the error. Then I said, "In lieu of some of your fees, I'd be happy to come to your office and provide some useful instruction and templates to avoid this error in the future."

His reaction, he was livid. You'd think I insulted his momma. I quickly responded, "No, that is a sincere offer, you have a need, I have a skill, it makes sense." Now some could view this as me be a smart ass (OK, just a little). But, hey, I worked in the central data processing center for a University, supporting professors and their curriculum for 19 years and I also developed and taught computer classes for that University for another 10 years. So it's not like I couldn't really be of value.

He, as many others have, underestimates the consequences of a bad spreadsheet. It has sunk companies from a financial perspective and even if caught in time it can do terrible PR damage.

Lawyers really do fall into two categories - Dumb and Dumber.

Authors Note: Quotes have not been verified as verbatim from recording.