The most conservative option

This jumped at me in a comment from one of my favorite bloggers, Allison Greene at Ask A Manager:

"Most attorneys will always first recommend the safest, most legally conservative course of action. That doesn't mean that it's the best one; it needs to be balanced against other competing interests -- legal interests are not the only ones in play."

It's funny that I've never thought of it in those terms before. My response to such extreme legal advice is usually something along the lines of, "What? That's ridiculous!"

Example:

HR: "According to our attorney, if we ask employees to respond to questions on our Facebook Fan Page, we could be held responsible for information on their profiles. So we are going to ask all staff to have a separate work Facebook account."

Me: "What? That's ridiculous!"

As you can see, my current response is not exactly helpful nor likely to produce results. I think it will be nice to at least have the ability to respond, "Yes, that would be the most legally conservative option, but I'm not sure it's the best one for our situation. Let's look at some other factors..."

That sounds significantly more reasonable.

Thanks again, Ask A Manager!