Moving and Waiting

"Thanks for keeping the ball moving forward" or "we will be all over it to get the ball moving" - I cannot tell you how many times I have heard some variation of the "moving ball-" theme as a metaphor for doing work on a deal. I always thought it was kind of dumb because moving the ball along usually means sending a disingenuously courteous email ("at your convenience, please let us know, if..." to somebody (typically the other party's lawyer) who is supposed to be doing something related to the deal and copying everyone else on it, including your client and every last minion working for him/her and the addressee's client and related minions. Typically, an email like this humiliates people into responding with a suggestion to set up a conference call. A call (especially an "all hands call" (another example of law firm jargon that makes me cringe)) implies that their failure to respond was not accidental, no! It was justified because the issues were just too important and controversial for one person to take on... After this, days can go by without any further action because someone (usually the non-lawyer client) realizes that they don't feel like wasting their time on a call with a bunch of lawyers discussing whether the words "amend, add to or remove" should be added after the words "[may not] modify" or whether "modify" already captures it all. After a few days though someone has to get on that ball again lest it gets definitively dropped...