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by jacques_chester 5019 days ago
Here's what I learnt in law school:

Do you have a legal question? See a lawyer.

A few hundred dollars now versus an uncapped downside later? You're basically crazy if you don't.

Your lawyer and accountant are to your business what a doctor and a dentist are to your body. You see them regularly, they give you specialist advice and they can save you serious trouble if you take their advice. These individuals see more permutations of business in a week than you will see in a year.

So stop double guessing whether your company will need a lawyer. You will. You just might not understand it yet. Lawyers and accountants are part of the cost of being in business. It's not their responsibility to be cheap. It's your responsibility to produce enough value for your customers that a profit gets made somewhere in the mix.

Like the article says, shop around. I'm the middle of getting a patent drafted. I picked my lawyer[1] based on the fact that he had a computer science degree and industry experience. You can do the same. Ask. Inquire.

And remember, lawyers are like drug dealers: the first taste is usually free. Go meet them. If you don't like them, see someone else. It's business, after all, not your personal life.

[1] http://www.ghfip.com.au/ws/principal-attorneys/index.jsp#Tho...

2 comments

In US certainly, but here's what I learnt living in Europe. You basically do not need lawyer. Ever. You can live happy life and run happy business. Without lawyers, without fear that somebody/anybody can/will sue you of anything. Wthout fear of shady contracts, shady business practicies etc. And even in very rare occasion when somebody decides to sue you and this case goes to court, even then you do not always need a lawyer. In Europe you can go to court without lawyer and win. I did, so can you.
> Without lawyers, without fear that somebody/anybody can/will sue you of anything. Wthout fear of shady contracts, shady business practicies etc.

That is just not true. Nowhere can you be happy-go-lucky about the contracts you sign. Even where there is a degree of protection for consumers like in Sweden, and I wouldn't just assume that everything will work out fine even then, b2b is very caveat emptor.

> In Europe you can go to court without lawyer and win.

What does "in Europe" even mean? There is nothing unified about the legal systems here, even in basic principles. Navigating the UK legal system is wholly unlike doing it in Italy.

> I did, so can you.

He did, maybe you won't be so lucky, get a local lawyer.

"Navigating the UK legal system is wholly unlike doing it in Italy"

Especially as there isn't really a single UK legal system.

I know posters below are ripping your 'in Europe' phrasing, because truly, there's no 'Europe' when it comes to legal systems and judgements.

But after stints in Malaga, Amsterdam, London, and Marseilles, I believe you. The legal systems there in Europe, in aggregate, do seem fairer and more logical than what the USA has. Especially with respect to small business.

Maybe "Ever." was overstating the case. But I do think that in most of Europe you need to worry about litigation so much less that it makes the US system seem bizarre.

(This is also true in Tokyo, where I live. This makes me suspect that some kind of weird outlier thing is going on in the USA with regard to litigation, as it is with infant mortality, literacy, etc.)

More litigation = more justice in the USA.
You obviously never had to fire anyone, had a customer who refused to pay you or had to sign an important deal with a large company.
I'm in Australia, not the USA. And we're talking about business owners, not private individuals.
I clerked at a law office while I was in college -- the lawyers there were happy to offer free 30 minute consultations because the conversion rate of the people that showed up for those was actually pretty high. It was a great way to build trust right off the bat and to ensure it was a good fit for a longer term partnership
Exactly. And for the same reason my lawyer above is giving me a fixed-price on the work he's doing.

(I think he's nuts for quoting fixed-price on anything legal, but I'm hardly going to say no.)

Surely it depends on the extent to which the time the work will take will change depending on external factors. A fixed fee for a first draft of terms and conditions is very different to a fixed fee for litigating a dispute to trial. I obviously use an exaggerated example to illustrate here but it is fair to say that a fixed fee can simply be a solid estimate of the time a matter will take multiplied by hourly rate (at least that's how we arrived at fixed fee estimates at my old firm).