About

Passive Guy is a former country lawyer, city lawyer, entrepreneur, tech executive and writer. He has permanently retired from everything but writing.

During the latter part of his professional life, PG was involved in high-stakes intellectual property litigation. He started The Passive Voice as an anonymous blog so his snarky remarks would not show up when opposing counsel performed a Google search.

After winding down his IP litigation practice, being embarrassed in court by something he wrote here was no longer an issue, so he’s not quite so anonymous these days. During the anonymous interlude, however, he had fun with PG’s persona and became accustomed to writing in the third person, so PG is the permanent blogger-in-residence around here.

Some of PG’s most popular posts are about contracts with publishers and agents. Click the Contracts category to see them all. There are a boatload.

During his legal and business career, PG has negotiated major contracts with a wide range of opposing parties. Following is an abbreviated list: Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Intel, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity Investments, AOL, Disney, Hallmark, and American Express.

During the last stage of his law practice, representing authors well-known and not, PG added a lot of large publishers, small publishers, literary agents, and book etailers to his list of  “folks on the other side of negotiations,” but he won’t provide details about this group because of his continuing client confidentiality obligations.

If you conclude that PG is a little OCD about client confidentiality, you’d be correct. On a couple of occasions, he has represented author friends of Mrs. PG. The author friends had to tell Mrs. PG that PG had represented them because PG wouldn’t.

Since PG wanted to keep The Passive Voice completely unprofessional, he had a separate professional site for clients and prospective clients, but he closed that down when he ceased practicing law.

The Obligatory Disclaimer: Passive Guy is an attorney, but he does not provide legal advice on this blog. He is most definitely not your attorney unless you and he both sign a retainer agreement. Because he’s retired from active practice, he doesn’t provide any legal advice to anyone other than Mrs. PG. He has never given and will never give legal advice in a blog post.

Passive Guy’s rants, examples of contract language, discussions of litigation issues, etc., are for discussion purposes only. What PG says may not be appropriate for your circumstances and may make your problems worse instead of better. PG’s ideas may ruin your life, cause bolts of lightning to strike you dead or trigger premature balding.

Talk to your lawyer before you engage in anything remotely legal based upon TPV posts, past, present or future, including comments, ideas, contract language, etc., etc., etc. that are discussed on this blog. You obtain legal advice from an attorney you hire, not a blog operated by a retired attorney.

In some items which PG includes in posts on TPV, outmoded language usage, e.g. “The man who,” “What does he want?”, etc., etc., etc. PG regards these usages as artifacts of a bygone age but intends no insult and directs no disparagement to any person by including the wording common in that bygone age. Perhaps he will write a macro to turn “he” into “he/she” and him into “him/her”, but, until then, he requests a bit of tolerance and consideration for PG’s aging fingers, which have already typed 13 quadrillion characters since he first learned to type in Mr. Schrupp’s class in high school.

When you want to shop on Amazon, if you click THIS LINK, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases.

You pay exactly the same price as you would if you went to Amazon directly.

The Passive Voice is published by C.L. Oakwood Corporation.

Amazon requires that PG make the following statements on TPV:

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

I/We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

If PG has missed any other disclaimers that exist in any contract or terms of service in any country in the world or anywhere else in the known universe, he hereby incorporates those disclaimers herein by reference.