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According to a January, 2003 Entrepreneur Magazine article, if you wait until you have a legal problem before finding a business attorney, it’s too late. Why do many business owners wait until “its too late”? Probably because they've had a bad experience with an attorney in the past or don’t know how to find a good business lawyer. Unfortunately, many times clients find their lawyer:
The best case scenario for a business owner is a legal advisor with real world business experience; who can learn about and understand your business; who is concerned about your business; who will give you practical advice to help you accomplish your business objective; and who won’t break your budget. This article will show you how to tell if a lawyer measures up. I’ve found Clients want 5 things from their business attorney: Concern, caring and a level of urgency. Regular communication. Up front discussion of fees and costs. Describing the process. Business expertise. Here’s what those things mean and how you can tell if your lawyer will provide them: (1) First, providing concern, caring and urgency means understanding where you are in your legal situation by listening to you and understanding what you want from your lawyer. It also means asking about your time frame and when you need the work completed. The attorney must actively listening to all of the facts and circumstances and ask clients about their goals before making a recommendation (or taking action). It also means meeting the clients’ level of urgency by agreeing to a time frame to complete the work. An experienced business lawyer also understands that you’ll probably be working with the person on the other side of the table long after the deal is negotiated and the legal work is done. Preserving the relationship means maintaining a respectful demeanor, understanding the other side's concerns and supporting negotiating points and proposals with valid business and legal purposes and simultaneously negotiating hard for your interests. Unfortunately, this can be difficult for some attorneys. (2) One of the biggest complaints clients have about their attorneys is the failure to return phone calls. Communication means returning your calls within one day and letting you know where your matter stands. A little discuss aspect of communication is the feeling that you get from the attorney. To get the best legal help possible, you must feel comfortable discussing anything and everything with your lawyer. Leaving out information can be disastrous because you don’t know what information would change the lawyer’s advice. (3) Fees and costs are usually a big complaint from clients. With hourly billing, clients often feel that they have signed a blank check for their lawyer. The attorney must actively discuss fees and costs up front, give you an estimate of the total cost and offer alternative billing arrangements such as fixed fees. This is really part of good communication. You should never get a surprise bill from your lawyer. (4) Describing the process means setting a schedule, identifying exactly what the attorney will do for you and what you’ll be expected to do, then discussing the process step by step and the alternatives that may develop. Once you and the attorney decide on a course of action, the attorney should map out the entire process and tell you how long it will take for the work to be completed as well as how long you can expect the entire case to take. (5) Finally, business expertise means an attorney whose practice is focused only on business matters and who has real-life non-lawyer business experience. This means you get real-world effective business oriented legal advice and don’t pay to train the attorney on business matters. Unfortunately, many attorneys have multiple practice areas and can only give a text book answer to business law questions. They may appear in criminal court in the morning and negotiate a business deal in the afternoon. And, they’ve never actually been in business
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About Ed Alexander
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