You have a legal problem that has come up. What do you do, who do you speak to? What are my options for dealing with this in a way that isn’t going to cost me a lot of money. Depending on your personality and where you are at in your business knowing what to take with you to a meeting with a lawyer is often a challenge.
Understanding the legal aspects of your business is crucial for your success. All too often we see business owners spend thousands, tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to solve a legal problem in their business. Sure, some of those problems are unavoidable but whether you are going to see a lawyer to prevent a problem or if you are reacting to something that has happened there is a lot you can do to prepare to see a lawyer.
Ask great questions
When you go to a lawyer they will generally ask you a lot of questions about your situation. Before you go to the lawyer you should spend time seeking to understand what it is that they will be asking you so that you can properly prepare for that meeting. Part of that is educating yourself on different legal aspects of your business, what they mean and how they might apply to you.
Next, you should ask the lawyer (or their team) what you need to bring to the consultation. Depending on the type of meeting that you are having with the lawyer you may need to bring documentation a completed questionnaire or other important information to that meeting.
What our tool is not designed to do?
The tool is specifically designed to produce a report that you can take to your lawyer so that they can help to implement the legal risks. Generally to obtain this type of advice from a lawyer would require an investment of around $1,000.00 (or 1,000.00 pounds) so that the lawyer can interview you, obtain all of your information and then write the report. Alternatively often lawyers may try to do this advice for free and then charge you more when they implement and do the work.
Either way the report is designed to save your time and money to find out this information and then have your lawyer do the work. We have also designed it to explain to you, in plain English, what all of these legal terms mean and why they are important. This means that when you go to see your lawyer you will not need them to explain what you need to do, you will already understand.
How you can use it to better work with your lawyer
Designing a tool that identifies every single risk factor in your business is impossible and any tool that tried to do that would take many hours to complete. Your time is far too valuable to waste doing that and any tool that pretends to do that will have gaps. For that reason we designed the tool to give you a broad understanding of what your legal risks are and what to do about them.
The same is true of our education material and Jeremy Streten’s book, The Business Legal Lifecycle. They are designed to give you a broad understanding of what you need to put in place for your business.
What if they say its up to you?
Sometimes the lawyer or their team members may leave it up to you so here is a list of what you should bring:
- A written statement as to what happened and why you need their help (even if this is in note form it will help you not miss anything);
- A list of questions that you want answered;
- Any documents that go for or against what you are trying to argue (where you have a dispute and remember they need to see everything);
- The details of all of your entities and structures so that the lawyer can understand your business structure and what you own (as well as owe); and
- Details of any previous advice that you have received.
At Business Legal Lifecycle we know that dealing with a lawyer can be difficult, it can seem daunting and costly. That is why we have designed our Legal Risk Assessment Tool and Education Course to help you to understand the law without a law degree. It is often difficult to understand what you need to do before you go to a lawyer and what costs you will save by taking a proactive approach (by its very nature a proactive approach saves you money that you would otherwise spend) but trust us that the savings are huge.
By working together with the Business Legal Lifecycle lawyers can help their clients to prevent legal risks within their business and prevent so many problems that commonly afflict small to medium sized businesses.
Get your Business Legal Lifecycle Legal Risk Assessment by clicking here now.
