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The client's lawyer sent us a formal letter on a Tuesday morning in November. Four pages. Every paragraph meticulously drafted. The threatened lawsuit was for four hundred and eleven thousand dollars, plus damages, plus fees, and the legal theory of the complaint was simple: we — my consulting firm — had taken their money for eleven months and delivered a piece of software that their operations team could not use. The letter was passed to my manager, Vincent Alessi, who read it in his office with the door closed for twenty-three minutes. When he came out, he walked directly to our managing partner's office, and the two of them had a closed-door meeting that lasted the rest of the morning. At 1 PM, the managing partner called a war-room meeting. I was invited. I was the project manager on the account. Vincent presented a narrative about the project's failure that was composed entirely of lies. And I sat in that war room and watched my manager lie to six senior partners and an outside attorney for ninety minutes, and I made a decision I would not be able to take back.