Learn To Love Your Lawyer
When it comes to attorneys, even the smartest business owners screw up. It doesn't have to be that way -- if you follow Inc.'s plan for managing your lawyer.
Published December 2004
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COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLEManny Balani doesn't hate lawyers. He just wishes they knew their place. The attorneys he's encountered tend to think that their $500-an-hour expertise is essential at all times. But Balani, the 29-year-old founder and CEO of Governors Distributors, a cigar distributorship in Miami, prefers to think of lawyers as the heavy-duty jigsaw you keep in the back of your garage -- "The tool," he says, "that cost you an arm and a leg but you use only once a year." When Balani reaches for that expensive piece of machinery, he wants it to work.
Unfortunately, people tend to be less reliable than machines -- and lawyers less so than most people. When Balani needed to trademark some tobacco and rolling-paper brands that he was launching, for example, he struck a deal with a lawyer for a discounted, flat-rate legal fee. Then the bill arrived. Not only was the total $1,000 more than promised, but the lawyer who'd agreed to the original fee had left the firm. What's more, the work had not been completed. After much wrangling, the firm agreed to a lower fee, with the understanding that it would resume work on the trademarks. Instead, once it had cashed the check, the firm quit.
Maybe, Balani has thought, he'd have better luck with a larger, more established firm. And he's been courted by some of Miami's better-known downtown corporate firms. But Balani usually finds himself put off by their swank offices and pretentious attitudes. "'Look at my marble floors. Look at my plasma TVs,'" he says, mockingly. "'Would you like coffee? Espresso?'" No, says Balani. What he'd like is an attorney who can make his legal problems go away so he can run his business. Is that too much to ask?
It sure seems to be. If negotiating the legal system is almost always a hassle, entrepreneurs tend to occupy their own special place in lawyer hell -- too poor to afford the best, yet too sophisticated and demanding to do it on the cheap. On the menu of horrors: unreturned phone calls; a condescending "I'm-a-lawyer-and-you're-not" attitude; the overworking and overbilling of routine matters; missed deadlines and deal-killing dropped balls.
The fact is, too many businesspeople don't know how to manage lawyers. Entrepreneurs who would never be taken advantage of in their dealings with customers, suppliers, partners, or employees, make dumb mistakes with their lawyers. They hire poorly and manage passively. And as a result, they fall prey to nasty surprises. It's the same kind of blind spot that afflicts many patients when doctors start throwing around medical terms, says management consultant and author Patrick McKenna: "They can get paralyzed."
It's easy to see why. The legal world is a mysterious fraternity, with its own language and customs. Who isn't mystified, even intimidated, when confronted with a stack of legal documents or the prospect of an impending lawsuit? And many lawyers are perfectly happy to exploit your relative lack of knowledge. It doesn't have to be this way. A lawyer can become a true business partner -- if you know how to structure and handle the relationship. Inc. canvassed some two dozen business owners and some of the nation's leading business lawyers and asked them to reveal the secrets of the legal temple. The result is a five-point program for getting the attorney-client relationship right. Follow it and you'll become a smarter consumer of legal services, have a healthier, more productive relationship with your attorney -- and begin your climb out of lawyer hell.
Be a Smart Shopper
Don't hand your legal fate to a stranger. Savvy legal consumers ask questions -- lots of them.
Before you can learn to love your lawyer, you have to find one. And that's where many people make their first mistake. Too often, entrepreneurs find their lawyers through personal connections -- old college chums, brothers-in-law, board members' golfing partners. That guy who cornered you at a cocktail party last month? He was a lawyer. Why not give him a call? That's not far from how Balani did it. How many potential lawyers did he bother to interview before settling on his feckless trademark attorney? "I shouldn't admit this," Balani says, "but I pretty much went with my first guy." And that wasn't the only time he's made the same mistake. "You're just caught up in getting it done," he says. "It's hard enough to take two hours out of my day to put out a legal fire" -- much less give the matter the same attention he would to something that's actually going to generate some cash for the company.
The next mistake? When meeting with a prospective attorney, the client's brain freezes. Experienced lawyers see it all the time. Clients meekly ask a few softball questions about a lawyer's bona fides, inquire about rates, and that's it -- they hand over their legal fate to a complete stranger. Competing bids? References? These and other routine due-diligence steps apparently fall victim to the desire to dispatch this legal hassle so that they can get back to real work.
