When you own a business or operate an independent contractor, handling contract negotiations and other legal issues can be tempting. However, this is often a mistake. Hiring a commercial lawyer can help protect your business from issues like unsecured lending, lawsuits, and asset protection.
This doesn’t always mean hiring an expensive law firm to represent you in court. Hiring an inexperienced attorney is not worth the cost (and risk) in most cases. There are many simple ways to protect your business from legal issues for much less than paying an attorney.
Before we get into specifics about why hiring a commercial lawyer is essential for small businesses and other self-represented parties, let’s take a moment to understand when it’s not such a great idea either.
Hiring Lord Commercial Lawyers is not always the best option for small business owners or other parties who can handle their legal matters. There are many times when hiring an attorney is unnecessary. These include:
You are self-represented, or you don’t know much about legal issues. You will not be hired or paid by the attorney for the representation. You want to negotiate a settlement before you pay for the services of an attorney. You will be working with a paralegal to represent you and your company in court. Your business processes may work without much assistance from unscrupulous attorneys and other lawyers. For example, if your business is running just fine on its own, why go through Attorney Smith when you can do as well, if not better? This includes drafting contracts yourself, handling bookkeeping and other administrative tasks, and making sure that write-offs and other transactions are accurate.
If your business has a good reputation and you are working within current laws and regulations, you may not need an attorney. The poster child for this situation is small businesses that find themselves in legal battles with big companies or government entities. Machinery Failure Is Not A Criminal Offense. This is a misconception that many attorneys believe. It has to do with the fact that they are focused on a more severe cases such as murder, theft, fraud, etc. If someone dies from machinery failure or other types of accidents, it won’t be held against them as it would be for other crimes.
The first thing to consider is what kind of legal representation you need. Sometimes people think about this the wrong way. Tax issues can fall into this category because the IRS can send you a demand letter which could turn into a lawsuit if it’s not responded to promptly enough from your perspective. It’s just important to remember that there are issues related to taxes even if you don’t have any specific questions related solely to taxes, as an earlier example. Taking some time to understand how an attorney works as well as knowing how we get paid will help us determine whether or not we want to take on a case in the first place and whether or not we’re willing to take on our clients for their legal bills as well (which is entirely typical).