(Unlike many lawyers,) I actually like practicing law and helping clients problem-solve. Would like to build a practice that serves as a solution, not another problem.
So tell me: what bad experiences have you had with lawyers? What about the good ones? If you're a founder, what is something you'd like to tell the legal industry?
Share/vent/spout off as you please, but be civil and please don't mention specific names!
I started interviewing lawyers. My standard question was "will you sign a contract for your services?". Most of them said some variant of no, although there was the one who accused me of being part of some bar investigation.
So one of them said "if you draw up the contract I'll look at it". Seemed reasonable to me! He stood up and came around from behind the desk to shake hands, at which point it became apparent that his feet were bare. Our relationship lasted for over a decade.
(Then there was that time in the cadillac driving through the drainage ditch while the bailiffs held a lawyer's head out the open window in the spray, but we won't discuss that.)
Negative experiences - Patient lawyer consultant at another company was just ok, they put the burden of strategy on us and any time we asked for advice they would flip things around and ask what we wanted to do, but high-level direction wasn't enough for them - Legal team inside a previous company would swoop in out of nowhere and raise a stink about every little thing. When we included them early on projects, they'd take it as a sign to try and meddle with every little detail and often delayed projects or led to them being shelved indefinitely. It would've gone a lot better if they just spent time to make sure we were informed about legal risks enough to make tradeoffs, but they were pretty heavy handed. In later years it got worse when they started to step on PMs and other leaders toes about overall feature designs and product designs. Like things that didn't have legal implications at all.
For instance I used to have a "tools of the trade" addendum (that I worked up together with the barefoot lawyer over several years) but that was before "open source" was much of a thing. It'd be worth several hundred dollars to me to have timely, pertinent boilerplate for that.
Or, there was the situation where an employer took VC money and wanted everyone to sign new contracts. I hired the lawyer they'd want... if they were hiring a lawyer locally. (He wasn't on retainer with them, so that was good intelligence to obtain.) I paid about $700 for the advice that "this contract is an intelligence test: if you sign it you're too stupid to work there". So I followed my lawyer's advice; I suppose it worked out as well as it possibly could have.
My only negative experience with the legal side is actually with law professors. I took a couple of law classes as filler in undergrad work, and these guys were the worst. Not only just bad professors, but also very arrogant. After following a few of them on Twitter after the fact, I don't think it was just my very small sample set either. They seem to be terrible, miserable people.
I tried to find some lawyers to ask questions about starting a company and understanding some of the legal implications. Literally nobody replied to me when I left a voicemail for consultation request. It left me with a really poor experience and I ended up YOLO’ing with Clerky.
Wouldn’t mind if anyone has some advice here. Everyone I talk to this about either comes from a family that’s loaded and everyone’s got their lawyer on their cell phone like it’s their buddy, or has lawyers in their family.
I've found that many lawyers have limited knowledge on the deep details or just can't spend the time to explore those defenses or novel defenses. They pretty much operate on a pattern of their past cases. For example, a vaccine injury lawyer doesn't want to look into the statistics of how common a rare injury when preceeded by a vaccine vs not. In a civil court where decisions are supposed to be based on "more likely than not" standard, showing the likelihood can make a huge impact. Or in another case the lawyer I talked to missed a couple of issues with police/prosecutor conduct which violated the rules of procedure, and missed a precedential ruling that would have been applicable to the case.
Client expectations can also be high regarding fairness in court (assuming litigation is potentially involved). Going back to the "more likely than not" standard, protection from abuses and red flag laws are abused. This is trivial to prove out statistically as the number of orders which are later reversed or not extended are grater than 51%, and that the overwhelming majority of the subjects they are served against have no history of abuse, evidence of abuse, nor did they abuse the person during or after the order (it's just a piece of paper afterall). Another example is when our rights were violated the lawyer we talked to said it was a violation but there's not a good case because the judges only care if there was significant financial or physical injury involved.
So doing things to manage client expectations could be good.
I haven't had many experiences with lawyers, thank God. But the ones I had have been mediocre. The whole system and experience has been a major let down from the stuff you're taught in school/society about justice, integrity, etc.
Learnings From Working With Lawyers
- You Need to Manage Your Lawyer, Not The Other Way Around
Your lawyer often will not understand the priority of a business issue or the impact that a delay in resolution can have on the business. It is your responsibility to explain that to them AND have them get it done. With multiple clients, you are, in reality competing for your lawyer’s time. Just because you are paying them well does not mean they will get it done on your schedule. Don't expect that.
- Tell Them Everything, No Matter the Situation
The more your lawyer knows about the business situation, the context, your concerns, your goals, the more a good lawyer can determine the best solution. There are typically many available solutions for a given problem, or many ways to negotiate a contract, the more your lawyer understands the sensitivities of the issue at hand, the better the ultimate outcome. And if your response to this is, I don't trust my lawyer, you need to find a new lawyer.
- Don't Be Afraid to Make Suggestions or Modifications
While they are experts in the law, they again are not necessarily experts in the situation. You have every right to redline your own lawyer's contracts with typos, word choices, or comment if something doesn't approach the business problem the right way. Just like in any requirements gathering process, you need to own the output from a business standpoint.
Suggestions for Lawyers
- Deliver What You Promised, When You Promised
What everyone is looking for when hiring a service provider of any kind is certainty that the job will get done. If you said you would send it first thing in the morning, send it at 9am PT or earlier, not 12pm PT. If you said you would follow up with questions before moving to the next round of negotiations, do it without needing to be asked twice. If you have run into a challenge, disclose it as soon as possible versus waiting until the next meeting. The sheer number of times I have had to remind lawyers that they owe me something or they are late on a deliverable is far too high for a high paid profession.
- Better Delineate What is "Market" and What is Negotiable
Most of the time in contracts there are certain things that are not negotiable or have to be in there for a certain reason. Don't lead your client down the road of negotiating on those types of items. It wastes everyone’s time and while it may help your billable hours in the short term, you will burn trust in the long term. Founders rely on you to understand what is negotiable / market / fair. Be that voice, especially when a founder is trying to negotiate something that will ultimately make them look foolish for negotiating on it.
- Invoice Timely and Accurately
While it seems basic, invoice items timely along with a brief description. Don't assume that founders will remember why you spent 12 hours negotiating an "NDA". As you build a relationship of trust, this can be more high level. But the number of times I've gotten duplicate invoices, or invoices with descriptions that are wrong or that seem out of bounds is far too high.