WIRTW #797: the 'compliment' edition

What is the best professional compliment you can get?

For me, it's this: "You don't sound like a lawyer."

I hear this often. And every time, I take it as a win.

Because when someone says that, what they're really saying is this: you're clear. You're direct. You're understandable. You're not hiding behind jargon, hedging every sentence, or turning a simple idea into an explanation that we can't understand or a 500-word paragraph.

In other words, you're communicating.

Too many lawyers confuse complexity with intelligence. They speak and write like they're being graded by a law professor instead of heard or read by a business owner. They default to legalese because it feels safe. Precise. Familiar.

It's a massive barrier.

Clients don't hire lawyers to sound like lawyers. They hire us to solve problems, explain risk, and help them make decisions. None of that requires Latin phrases or sentences that run on for half a page.

In fact, the opposite is true. The more complicated the issue, the more valuable plain English becomes.

If your client has to read your email twice to understand it, you've already lost ground. If they have to ask you to explain in "plain English," you've already lost them. If they forward it to someone else (or an AI) with "Can you translate this?" you've missed the mark entirely.

Clarity isn't dumbing things down. It's doing the hard work of making the complex accessible. It's knowing your subject well enough to explain it simply.

That's my job.

So no, I don't want to "sound like a lawyer." I want to sound like someone my clients can understand.

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Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.

The 5th nominee for the Worst Employer of 2026 is … The Caucasian Chooser

Dimerco Express USA didn't hide it. They didn't bury it in coded language. They didn't even pretend it was anything else.

They wanted to hire white employees—and they acted on it.

That directive came from the top. The company’s president pushed for "Caucasian" sales hires because he believed that’s who would best attract business. HR was expected to follow that lead. Recruiting reflected it. Internal materials reflected it. Candidate decisions reflected it.

And when someone inside the company raised the obvious issue—this is illegal discrimination—the response wasn't to stop.

It was to be more careful about saying it out loud.

Voluntary retirement incentives vs. age discrimination

Microsoft just gave corporate America a new playbook for thinning the ranks without ever uttering the words "layoff" or "older workers."

For the first time in its 51-year history, Microsoft is offering a voluntary retirement program. The eligibility formula? Your age plus your years of service must equal at least 70.

Do the math and the story tells itself. The youngest realistic participant is someone around 45 with 25 years at the company. In other words, this is a program designed—intentionally or not—to target older, long-tenured employees.

And just to make things more interesting, senior directors and above need not apply. This is aimed squarely at the middle layers of the organization.

So, is this illegal age discrimination?

The 4th nominee for the Worst Employer of 2026 is … The Disability Turkey

A longtime employee tells her employer she has breast cancer. She needs time off—intermittent leave—to undergo chemotherapy and recover. The company sends her to a third-party benefits administrator. She and her daughter try to navigate the system. They file a claim. They call. They follow up.

Nothing happens.

Instead, the absences pile up. The attendance points accrue. Even with doctor's notes.

She shows up to work, scans her badge at the door... and it doesn't open.

That's how she learns she's been fired—for missing work to treat her cancer.

If the EEOC's allegations are true, this case isn't just about a failure to accommodate. It's about an employer that checked out entirely.

A beast of a harassment lawsuit

Jimmy Donaldson, better known as YouTube's biggest star, MrBeast, is calling this lawsuit "clout-chasing," a grab for headlines and a payday.

Maybe.

But before you dismiss it, look at what's alleged—and what it says about two issues entirely within an employer's control.

Poor Richard's Guide to Not Being a Professional Pessimist

When my daughter was in high school, we fired her therapist.

Not because therapy doesn't work. Not because she didn't need help. But because the therapist insisted on something that was deeply counterproductive—an obsessive focus on the negative.

Every session circled the same drain. What was wrong. What hurt. What wasn't working. Week after week.

And guess what? She didn't get better.

At some point, it clicked for my wife and me: if all you do is stare into the darkness, don’t be surprised when that's all you see.

So we made a change. We found someone who helped her see the full picture—yes, the struggles, but also the wins, the growth, the things worth building on. That's when things started to shift.

I thought about that experience a lot this week in Philadelphia.

WIRTW #796: the 'museum of fascism' edition

I didn't expect a seaside fortress in a sleepy Portuguese surf town to hit this hard.

Peniche is postcard perfect—wind, waves, seafood, and sunburns. But perched above the Atlantic sits the Fortaleza de Peniche, once a political prison during Portugal's decades-long Estado Novo dictatorship. Today, it houses the National Museum of Resistance and Freedom. It should be required viewing.

This isn't ancient history. This is 20th-century Europe. Real people. Real oppression. Real consequences.

The exhibits walk you through the mechanics of authoritarianism—not in abstract theory, but in lived experience. Surveillance. Arbitrary arrest. Isolation. Torture. Censorship. The slow suffocation of dissent. The regime didn't need chaos to seize power; it needed normalization. Compliance. Silence.

Sound familiar?

What makes the museum so effective is its restraint. No theatrics. No overproduction. Just cells, letters, photographs, and stories, both written and in videos of survivors. You stand in the tiny rooms where prisoners spent years. You read smuggled notes to families. You see how ordinary people became enemies of the state for the crime of speaking up.

And you realize how thin the line is between "this could never happen here" and "it already is."

Authoritarianism doesn't arrive with a bang. It creeps. It tests boundaries. It depends on people deciding that a little bit of repression is tolerable, that the targets somehow deserve it, that institutions will hold.

Until they don't.

As an employment lawyer, I spend my days thinking about power—who has it, how it's used, and what happens when it’s abused. This museum is a stark reminder that unchecked power always finds new ways to entrench itself. Rights erode quietly before they disappear loudly.

Portugal eventually chose a different path. The Carnation Revolution in 1974 ended the dictatorship with nearly zero bloodshed. Democracy returned. Freedoms were restored. But only after decades of damage.

History doesn't repeat itself exactly, but it rhymes more than we'd like to admit. Walking out of that fortress, into the bright Atlantic light, one thought lingered:

Complacency is the authoritarian's best friend. 

Or, as the sign at the museum's end reminded us: 

The achievement of democracy is never fully consolidated. We have to fight for it every day.

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You can hear about the rest of my trip to Portugal, as well as Norah's recent trip to New York City, on this week's episode of the Norah and Dad Show, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, Overcast, in your browser, and everywhere else you get your podcasts.

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Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.