Every business needs competent legal counsel. The bigger the business, and the more widespread the scope of the business, the more complex the legal issues facing it will be. Failure to cover all the legal bases of a transaction at the outset can result in dire and costly consequences. So it's crucial to find the right lawyer to handle your company's legal affairs. The task can seem daunting, but getting satisfactory answers to the following questions will help you narrow down the possibilities.
A lawyer who had academic exposure to subjects such as corporate finance, cost accounting, human resources, risk management, and marketing demonstrates an early career choice to serve the needs of business.
You may take comfort in learning the person you trust with providing legal services to your company possesses empathy resulting from having ‘walked in your shoes’. A person with this type of experience is more likely to appreciate the management context of the decisions within the company’s legal environment.
There is no better way for a lawyer to get to know a business client’s needs than to be on the buying end of the transaction – just like you are. This type of experience adds value and is likely to develop the service-centric attitude you seek.
You may value having your own business premises as the primary point for legal services delivery, as this would give you and your employees easier access to your lawyer, akin to the advantages of hiring an '‘in-house'’ lawyer. You may prefer your lawyer to work on site to save time lost for staff to go to an external lawyer’s office when services are sought.
As a businessperson, you may feel more comfortable knowing that the lawyer you deal with is positioned to decisively act ‘on-the-spot’ in these areas, just as you likely are in your own realm of business.
It is worth knowing whether the law firm under consideration restricts their practice to serving the needs of business or also practices in other fields like real estate, employment law, intellectual property and tax matters.
The so-called ‘new economy’ is in large part a product of these factors. You may feel that significant exposure to and experience in these areas will provide a real-time context to the advice you receive, as you confront these issues in the evolution and competitive environment of your business.
You may feel that a lawyer who manages his or her own internal costs and in a manner consistent with your own values reflects the innovative spirit you seek.
If hourly billing is not your preferred pricing model, you may wish to explore billing methods involving fixed fees to perform specified work, or one of a number of arrangements described above. Typically, in such arrangements the up-front and ongoing costs of a legal project are reduced in return for some sort of incentive on project completion or related to success of the outcome, as defined in a fee agreement.
You may be interested in a commitment to put proactive advice in action to:
If such issues are important to you, you may wish to seek concrete examples of how this has been achieved by this person in the past.
If you operate a small business, you already fill a lot of different roles. Should Accountant / Bookkeeper be one of them? Maybe outsourcing is an option that will work for you. Here are some pros and cons to consider when deciding whether to outsource your accounting functions vs. doing them inhouse.
As a condo board member, I've been asked on several occasions at AGMs to discuss the benefits of having a professional property management company take over the management of our self-managed condominium. Every unit owner in our building knows that this will mean an increase in our monthly condo fees, but will the benefits make the extra costs worthwhile? Let's look at the pros and cons of hiring a professional management company vs self-management by the condo association.
There's no doubt that hiring a property manager will cost more than having the condo board / HOA manage the project. Monthly condo fees will need to cover those costs, and no unit owner likes to hear that his or her fees are going up. So self management is an attractive option to the owners in general.
However, if you calculate the value of the time the Board members put into looking after condominium issues, it becomes apparent that there's also a large personal cost to these folks that the other owners don't see. Whether or not the project is self-managed, the condo association will still have to hire professionals to handle legal and accounting matters. These are roles the Board members cannot fill themselves unless they have the skills, training and expertise. And even if a Board member is qualified to provide legal or accounting services, the ethics and the legality of such an arrangement would be questionable.
Advantage: Professional management company for expertise and optics
Individuals who serve on condo boards are typically career people who work during the day and must rely heavily on contractors and resident volunteers to take care of situations that arise while they're at work. This can be frustrating to an owner who has a plumbing problem and can't reach the Board members when the problem arises.
In emergency situations when time is of the essence, it's very important for the affected parties to contact plumbers, electricians, or other service people quickly to mitigate the damage as much as possible. This could be difficult in a self-managed scenario if it occurs at a time when all Board members are at work or away (such as over Christmas or a long weekend - we had just such an instance during my last stint on my condo board). That's when a professional property manager, with a 24/7 emergency line, is ideal. Owners have more peace of mind knowing that no matter what happens, they'll be able to reach someone to deal with the problem - day or night, 365 days a year.
Advantage: Professional management company.
Managing a condo or strata sometimes means acting as a collection agency, an enforcer, or an arbitration panel. Imagine having to levy a fine against one of your neighbors because they've violated the Bylaws, or calling the police to deal with a noise complaint or (worst case scenario) to break up a domestic dispute. Those are all situations that our condo board has had to deal with on more than one occasion.
If the sanction is coming from one of your neighbors instead of a third party management company, it's much more personal and is more likely to result in a strained relationship between the parties, if not an outright rift. It's also stressful for the Board members when they have to deal with unpleasant matters like collecting overdue fees and assessments or issuing warnings to fellow owners over infractions. A property management company can handle these situations in an impersonal and detached manner, which allows the Board to maintain a neighborly relationship with the other owners.
Advantage: Professional management company.
A self managed building relies heavily on its volunteers. Getting other owners involved in running the condominium creates a deeper sense of community and instills an even greater pride of ownership among the unit owners. The people in our building routinely volunteer to look after flower beds, help out with sanding of the parkade ramp in winter, run the trash compactor, and sort recyclables. A condo management firm does not have the same relationship with the owners that the Board members do, and in a self managed condo the Board has the opportunity to solicit help and support from other unit owners in a way that an outside management company could not accomplish.
Advantage: Self management.
Band managers take on many responsibilities - promoter, business and financial advisor, negotiator, accountant, publicist, agent, chauffeur, image consultant - depending on the needs of the artist. The role of the manager is to develop, guide and promote the career of the artist. That entails building connections within the industry with concert promoters, record company execs, and others who are in a position to help the artist move up the ladder of success.
When searching for a contractor to do new construction or renovations and improvements to an existing home, there are some key considerations to keep in mind to help you find a reputable company that will do quality work.
Let's say you're brokering a deal between a client who wants to sell a business and potential buyers who are interested in acquiring just such a business. You arrange for your client to meet several of these buyers to discuss whether a deal is do-able. Later, your client tells you that none of them are really serious and he'd like some time to consider his options.
A couple of months go by, and you find out that he completed the sale of the business to one of the buyers you introduced him to. Not only is it infuriating and unfair to lose your commission in this way, it's unnecessary.
Every broker or agent who acts in an intermediary role in a transaction should have their clients sign a non-circumvention agreement to prevent just such an end run from occurring. There are many scenarios in which a non-circumvention agreement should be considered, for instance:
A party that owns certain technology agrees with another party to negotiate with interested third parties to develop and manufacture the technology. Party 1 agrees not to by-pass Party 2 and go directly to the manufacturers.
A venture capital lender agrees to provide a client seeking financing with leads to potential investors drawn from its network of established connections. In return, the client agrees not to consummate any transaction without compensating the lender.
A company hires independent sales agents to generate leads. Both parties mutually agree not to enter into any transaction with the other party's business contacts.
A non-circumvention agreement is typically conjoined with a confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement (NDA). This enables the parties to protect not only their business leads and contacts that they have worked so hard to establish, but all of the confidential information that they have exchanged with each other. Every NDA should include a non-circumvention clause to prohibit the person receiving the confidential information from circumventing the owner of that information by directly contacting its customers, employees and business contacts.
Image by Keith Johnston from Pixabay
