Citing caselaw spontaneously can be an extremely effective tactic for corporate lawyers, impressive to your colleagues and intimidating to your counterparts. On a recent conference call, for example, opposing counsel cited Hadley v. Baxendale to support their position in a contract negotiation. Not wanting to be outdone, I quickly countered with a reference to Dudley v. Stephens. While I think it worked well enough in the moment, dealing with subsequent emails asking for clarification on the applicability of a case about cannibal sailors to indemnification provisions took a lot of time and energy.