By Arnab Dey
You don’t need to worry much after hiring a lawyer since it’s their job to guide your business through a case and give legal advice. However, without a good relationship and communication, your business may fail to be well protected legally.
Different lawyers have diverse ethics and values, and you must be dynamic in dealing with your business attorney to get the best-case results. A comfortable working relationship between yourself and your business lawyer can make or break your case.
Here Are 13 Prime Ideas To Work With Your Corporate Lawyer Seamlessly
The following are some tips on how you can work seamlessly with your corporate lawyer for the success of your business:
1. Find An Attorney Who Understands The Business
Most of the legal issues your company will have will be business related. Your lawyer can only help you without hassle and misunderstanding if they know what your business is all about. You can work seamlessly with an attorney who understands your business because then they can have a solid business judgment and help you make an informed opinion on a case.
Therefore, to ensure your business’s legal issues run smoothly, get a corporate attorney experienced with your specific business. Also, ensure they’re dedicated to serving your company, devoted to integrity and excellence, zealous in defending your interests and committed to quality legal services.
2. Think Of The Lawyer As A Business Investment
Your business lawyer is an investment, and you should remember to keep your relationship seamless. Every legal step your business attorney takes should ensure the company’s success. The lawyer is a business investment that makes operations better by ensuring your company captures the value it’s creating, and they make the business better through risk control.
By considering your lawyer a business investment, you can make professional and sound legal decisions. Entrepreneurs work well with investments, and by putting your lawyer in that category, you can work well together.
3. Set Agendas And Send Memos
To make your business meetings productive, set the meeting agendas and send the memo to your lawyer. A few days before the scheduled meeting date with your lawyer, send a memo that states what you hope to accomplish, the facts, and any questions you may have.
Additionally, this will give your lawyer time to think through the memo in their free time, and they can come prepared with solutions, and you can spare a few billing hours.
4. Plan Ahead
As you consult your business lawyer, you pay for the expertise by the hour. You may lose sight of this and go over your legal service budget, which could lead to a strenuous relationship with your attorney. To avoid such budget issues, ensure you plan ahead of any meeting to get your money’s worth.
You can plan by organizing all the documents you need for the case and planning your questions. Have relevant and high-quality documents with you before the meeting because you have to pay for the paralegal, even for online access. Preparing this beforehand saves you both money and time. Furthermore, you can get all your concerns answered by a lawyer.
5. Communicate Your Business Needs Efficiently
Communication between your attorney and the business determines how well you work together. Your lawyer can offer advice and represent the business best if they understand it and have an efficient and open communication channel.
For a great working relationship, your attorney and the business correspondent should be able to return emails and calls swiftly. Ensure you communicate any deadlines so your lawyer can prioritize your needs and update them on any developments, such as CC-ing them on board meeting emails.
Also, during communication, ensure you provide meaningful information about your business. This way, the lawyer can easily translate what you tell them into actionable legal strategies. Remember to keep digital and hard copies of all data provided by your lawyer.
6. Listen To Your Attorney’s Advice
You can only work seamlessly with your lawyer if you trust the counsel they offer. You’re paying them to offer you advice and advocate for the business. Hence, it doesn’t help when you fail to follow their professional opinion regarding the business.
As an entrepreneur, learn to trust your lawyer’s advice, even when you’re unsure since you aren’t a legal practitioner. Remember, as lawyers offer you advice, they have considered the risk exposure of the business and know what to do if their advice fails. Taking your route could put your business at greater risk.
7. Practice Preventive Law
Instead of having your lawyer fix things for you, let them prevent the problems. Arrange meet-ups with them at least twice a year to update them on any advancements in the business, and instead of paying for this time, you can buy lunch. With the high legal service competition rate, your lawyer will agree to this to maintain a good relationship with you.
Preventive law helps the attorney fix issues before they become bigger problems. It shouldn’t be the main agenda of the meeting, but to get the lawyer’s views on what you should look out for in your plans. It will create opportunities to shift your lawyer’s focus from remedial to preventive law.
8. Give Your Lawyer An Advance Notice
Your corporate lawyer has other clients, and you need to let them know when something is developing in your business so they can add you to the schedule. An advance notice places you on the schedule, and the attorney can assemble a team if you need one. Also, it makes it difficult for the lawyer to make excuses about why they can’t help your business within the set schedule.
9. Be Upfront On The Fees
Before you engage your lawyer, request the retainer agreement or engagement letter that describes how the attorney will charge for their services. Knowing this upfront helps you have a budget, and you don’t have to fight over payment for counsel.
Review the relationship and bills periodically. Insist on having detailed descriptions of the services. It creates a tight feedback loop on the tasks and costs incurred. Also, ensure there’s only one person in the company who can call the corporate lawyer and authorize work.
10. Be Precise With The Business Facts
When dealing with your corporate attorney, concentrate only on the facts relevant to your case. Although they also need pertinent information, don’t go on long rants that won’t change the current facts.
It will result in a huge bill you’ll not enjoy paying. Your corporate attorney understands that the legal process can feel unfair and polarizing at times; nonetheless, staying focused on the law, the facts of the case, and moving forward is how to resolve these legal problems.
11. Be Honest With Your Attorney
Being honest with our lawyers makes or breaks how you work with each other. You should tell your lawyer all the positives and negatives of your business. The more open you are about the business, the better it can be protected from legal issues.
You don’t need to worry about them exposing any business secrets that may bring you down. The attorney-client privilege ensures that anything you say to the lawyer stays between you.
Also, honesty enables your lawyer to negotiate better deals for the business. With all the necessary information, your attorney can strategize the best legal action for your business. Finally, honesty saves money and encourages better accountability from the attorney and yourself.
12. Manage Your Expectations
While you may think your attorney will fix all your business’s legal issues, this isn’t true. The lawyer must follow the law and the facts of the case, which isn’t a magic wand to make things disappear. You can work seamlessly with your attorney to get your business out of trouble when you’re ready to deal with whatever the realistic breakdown of the chances of success is.
The probability of success can be slim, and you may not like it. But remember, you hired your corporate lawyer to give you realistic and honest opinions on the legal situation of the business.
13. Have A Goal In Mind During Consultation
Feeling vengeful or angry about an unfair thing that has happened in business isn’t enough to call your lawyer in for a consultation. It could damage your image with the lawyer, and they could term you as their ‘hard client.’ To avoid such issues with your lawyer, ensure you have a goal in mind that can produce a legal remedy to the problem.
Your corporate lawyer can’t take legal action on emotions, but an actionable judicial belief. Take some time and think through what you want to accomplish with the help of your lawyer.
Hence, before a consultation, ensure you have a goal that gives the lawyer a clear image of what you’re trying to attain. Whether you’re pursuing a breach of contract, ending a co-ownership, or any other claim, it ensures you’ve got any documentation needed.
Conclusion
Working seamlessly with your corporate lawyer is about being responsive and honest with each other. You should put your trust in the lawyer you hire so that they’ll be able to represent the business adequately and break down any complex legal frameworks for you.
With the above tips, you should be able to relate well with your corporate lawyer and ensure the continuity and success of your business.
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