Not only did Ci-ci have to goad them, he also had to understand how they'd respond. And, to understand how they'd respond, he'd have to know that they had already looked into him. Even further, he then had to formulate the perfect response.

There was no doubt that had this been a mock debate, they would have lost.

Ci-ci leisurely walked to the head of the table and plopped down. His eyes involuntarily shone when he looked at the beauty that was Isabella, but it didn't cross the lines of respect, only simple appreciation. As far as Ci-ci was concerned, if a beautiful woman got offended because he appreciated her looks for half a second too long, he'd simply retort that she was too beautiful.

Luckily, Ci-ci had seen plenty of women as and even more beautiful than Isabella, so he maintained a calm and level head. It wouldn't affect his ability to work.

After Jason and Isabella recollected them, Ci-ci had all but reclined and put his feet up on the table. But, he was inwardly shaking his head. 'Lawyers shouldn't be this rattled from something so minor. Even though they have the excuse that they're young, they should have already faced trials of their own. It's clear that their opponents till now have been handpicked by the firm to boost their confidence slowly.'

Of the two, Isabella was the first to calm herself, and also the first to respond.

"I commend you for using the easiest and most straight forward way to gain our respect, this saves us a lot of time. But, I still disagree with your points. My methods are perfectly legal."

Ci-ci lightly tapped on the table, before nodding. "Let's go over them, then. Shall we?

"The first idea you brought up involved slight of hand tricks with patents, s.h.i.+fting their owners.h.i.+p or leaking them.

"For one, either one of these methods violate 'In Bad Faith' laws. And before you mention how difficult it is to win a cased based on bad faith laws, I'm well aware of how difficult it is to prove intent in the court of law. However, something so blatant as creating a branch company mere weeks before an official merger would need the worst lawyer imaginable to screw up."

"Bad faith laws?" Jason frowned. "All of the bad faith laws case studies we've learned of all involve civil cases dealing with Insurance companies. I've never seen a case where a bad faith law is implemented between two companies."

Ci-ci sighed. "That's because your ideas are far too stupid to even try. No veteran lawyer would ever suggest what two have."

Before Isabella and Jason could get angry again, Ci-ci continued. "Bad faith between two companies almost never happen precisely because of how difficult they are to prove. Bad faith cases are often last-ditch attempts by poor people who've gotten screwed over by their insurance companies.

"The reason why the win percentage on those civil cases is so low is because any true company has a million different fail safes to deny bad faith."

"If that's the case, then what's the problem with us using it?" Isabella frowned.

"Like I said, because your method is too crude. If an insurance company wants to avoid paying out, there are a million tactics they could use. They could dig up your history, they could reference past cases, they could lengthen the trial to the point where a normal individual from a normal family would no longer be able to keep up with the costs.

"However, do you see the commonality between these techniques? They only work against people without money and time. If a normal person sues a company for bad faith, whether they're in the right or not doesn't matter, they will more often than not, lose. But, if one company sues another company for bad faith, those tactics won't work anymore. In the end, the one who was in the wrong will lose.

"Do you understand?"

Ci-ci nodded when he noticed their pensive att.i.tudes. 'At least they know how to listen.'

"Bad faith laws stop us from creating a branch company," Isabella said, "But what about leaking the formulae? It's not technically illegal to do this yet because our companies haven't merged. And although we could still be sued for bad faith, they'd have to prove we were the ones to leak it first. That is definitely much more difficult to do than just pointing to the creation date of a branch company."

"That deals with another problem with your suggestions." Ci-ci said seriously. "You're not thinking about the client.

"When you mentioned leaking the patents, you were well aware that doing so would be a heavy hit to the research group. Yet, your justification was framed in terms of billable hours and revenue for the firm. Don't you understand that a firm is nothing without its clients? Especially its Prime Clients?

"If we gutted the research group simply for the sake of short-term revenue, we'd severely weaken our position into the future. And, even if you're not convinced by this argument, are you not aware of malpractice laws?"

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Isabella frowned. "Malpractice laws could fill more than a hundred encyclopedias on their own. Who could possibly know them all?"

What she said wasn't an exaggeration. Malpractice didn't just cover a single profession, it covered them all. Almost every job under the sun could be sued for malpractice, and each of those professions had its own quirks and caveats to be taken into account.

Even if Isabella focused on malpractice as it related to lawyers, there were also an inconceivable number of branch types of lawyers from corporate lawyers to divorce lawyers, and so on. Each were protected differently. It could be said that suing for malpractice was even more difficult than suing for bad faith.

Ci-ci shook his head. "In the law record of West Continent, published 2346. Under corporate lawyers, volume 323, page 456, paragraph 4, in the sub-category of mergers. 'In the event that a merging company sustains losses of 30% or more of their value due to either suggested, implicit, or explicit guidance given by their acting head counsel, liability is clear in reference to Amerson v. Quicky Pharmaceuticals.'

"You do the math. Are the patents of a research group worth 30%, or not?" Although Ci-ci asked this, the answer was clear by his smile.

**

It wasn't until the morning sun was rising into the skies that Ci-ci finally left the conference room. He was the type of person that could go even 3 or 4 days without sleep and function just fine, but Jason and Isabella were clearly reaching the ends of their rope, so he let it be.

The worst part of it all was that Ci-ci spent much of the time shooting down their half-baked ideas. Even though, to him, they'd obviously fail, he couldn't understand why they were so confident in them. Although this made him seem like a person who was only willing to point out the flaws in others' plans, but never come up with his own, it was worth the label.

If he wanted to raise up Patterson and Gravelle, he obviously couldn't tackle every case by himself, he needed a stronger supporting cast. So, Ci-ci decided to use his expertise as a teacher to slowly mould these talents properly.

It didn't matter too much in the end, Ci-ci had his own plans. And when the time came, he'd achieve a swift victory.

For now, he had to worry about how he'd make it up to Milana. She was probably still wondering where he was.