"Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari is one of my favorite books, if for no other reason than it compares lawyers to Shamans. I'm a Shaman? You gotta admit, that sounds pretty cool.
In my thirty years of practicing law, I've never thought of my role quite that way. But sitting in my office late one evening, surrounded by LLC agreements and property deeds, I realized Harari had captured something profound about what we lawyers actually do. Neither shamans nor lawyers plant crops or hunt game. They don't build houses or forge tools. Yet throughout history, successful societies have supported these specialists who seem to produce nothing tangible. Why? Because they interpret and manipulate something equally vital to human cooperation: invisible rules that not only bind society together but builds wealth for those who learn and leverage these rules, these “Laws of Money.”
Allow me to illustrate my point.
The Law's Alchemy: When Property Transforms Through Legal Magic
If you buy a fixer-upper to rent out for income, what do you own? Real estate or real property? Or both? If you listen to your attorney and transfer your real property into an LLC, something magical happens. You no longer own real estate, you own intangible personal property.
Just this week, this magic was incanted when my client came to me about her very first investment. "It's just a small duplex," she said, "but it's mine." That's when I had to explain something fascinating about ownership – something most property owners never fully grasp.
"What exactly do you own?" I asked. She looked confused. "The duplex, of course."
"Actually," I explained, "you own two distinct things right now: real estate (the physical building you can touch) and real property (a bundle of legal rights about that building). They're different, though most people never realize it. But watch what happens when we work a little legal magic."
Two hours later, after filing precisely worded documents – our modern equivalent of ancient incantations – Sarah's ownership had transformed completely. She no longer owned real estate at all. Instead, she owned something entirely different: an intangible personal property interest in a limited liability company. Poof! Like a shaman turning water into wine, we'd transformed physical property into abstract legal rights.
The Magic is a Promise
But here's the real magic: with this transformation came a powerful promise, not from me, but from the Law itself. The Law promised that Sarah's personal assets would be protected, separated from her investment property by an invisible but very real legal shield. This shield exists for one reason: enough people believe in it. Just like ancient spirits gained power through collective belief, corporations and LLCs exist and protect wealth because we all agree they do.
This is the same magic that lets corporations outlive their founders, that turns ideas into patents worth billions, that allows a piece of paper (or digital code) called "stock" to represent real ownership in vast enterprises. It's all built on shared beliefs in legal constructs – modern spirits that shape our economic reality.
Riddle Me This
Yet here's what baffles me: while most successful investors and entrepreneurs know about this magic, many property owners never use it. They continue owning properties in their own names, never availing themselves of the protective transformations the Law offers. It's like having access to a powerful protective spell but choosing to leave your village unguarded.
Why? Often because they don't understand the different forms property can take, or they think legal structures are just complicated paperwork rather than powerful wealth-protection tools. They don't realize that, like the shamans of old, today's legal practitioners aren't just pushing papers – they're shaping reality through the power of collective belief.
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