If You Really Want To Innovate Put An Autistic Person On Your Team

[hifiguy]

1. I second this as a dx'd Asperger person

Some years ago, before my diagnosis but long after I had figured out I was quite a different sort of a duck, I was working as a contract attorney on a big antitrust case representing plaintiffs.

The partner in charge called me in to his office shortly after I started at the firm and told me I was going to have to write a motion to challenge defendants' classification of certain documents as confidential so that we could show them to our clients. He told me up front "this is a nuisance motion, but we have to do it. I've never seen a court grant one of these, so I certainly won't hold it against you when the magistrate judge denies it. Give it your best shot."

I buried myself in the library with every civil procedure treatise I could lay my hands on, read dozens of cases and crafted a very carefully reasoned sniper-shot brief over the course of three weeks. It was then argued by my boss to the magistrate judge.

Two weeks later, in a team meeting, my boss singled out my "excellent" efforts and announced that the motion had been GRANTED as to about 80% of the documents we wanted out clients to see and congratulated me personally in front of everyone. Being a good Aspie I am terrific at connecting logical dots others just don't see, and explaining the connections with painstakingly obscure citations and details. I won't say boo to anyone in a meeting, but give me a truly thorny legal issue and the time to research it and think deeply about it and I can make a better argument than just about anyone.