Ask HN: Can I get an amicus please?

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. And Excel spreadsheets. Guess which of the 4 can be used without question against you in federal court.

That is, unless the US Supreme Court decides differently.

An amicus (“friend of the court”) brief is the legal equivalent of a third party investing in your company. Sometimes it’s essential, sometimes it helps, and sometimes it’s just a nuisance. When it comes to the SC, a familiar dilemma presents itself.

After the Court agrees to hear your case (“grants certiorari”), meaning you’ve made the top 1%, every suit in a law firm wants to write an amicus brief to weigh in. It’s like a series B funding round. Every knuckle-dragging neanderthal with too much money sees where the stampede is going and wants in, even though you don’t really benefit much from the help. There’s a lot of prestige generated for law firms if they can attach their name to a SC decision, and “yeah, me too” isn’t hard to generate.

But before the SC agrees to hear your case, nobody wants to write you an amicus. You are not yet derisked, and face that 1% chance of even having your case heard. Instead of a series B, it’s a seed round. This is the stage for a startup where you desperately need a small amount of capital and although the risk of failure is higher, it’s a substantially higher payoff (and unfortunately more work) for the investor. And of the tiny fraction of defendants that realize how essential the help is, most come up short trying to raise it.

Invest in your own 6th amendment right to challenge fabricated evidence against you. And more than money, I want advice. Specifically, legal advice to certain figures in black, in the form of an amicus brief. You can weigh in at mattchannon dot org.

If all you have is money and still want to help, you could always buy some pixels with your advertising budget (milliondollarapp.com). That’d be a worthwhile spend even if I didn’t appeal to your morbid curiosity.