The prevailing thought with most business owners is that they don’t have a need for a lawyer, or at least regularly, and if something comes up they will hire one. Most small and mid-sized businesses don’t spend a lot of time thinking about legal services. While businesses are (mostly) aware that there are some legal needs involved with running a business, it’s almost certainly not any part of their core operations. Typically business owners piece together what they consider the basics from an online resource or some document creation website.
But the truth is that legal is a vitally important part of running a successful business, you need to be able to define unacceptable behavior, provide certainty and stability in your company, protect yourself (and the public) and avoid or manage disputes that are certain to arise. Hiring a lawyer to take control of your legal needs, before you find yourself in a lawsuit, is more efficient and cost effective.
There’s a better way to handle, and prevent, legal issues that arise in business than waiting until an issue has come up and then trying to find an answer or solution online. Or, even worse, waiting until you’ve found yourself in the middle of an expensive and time consuming dispute. Additionally, you won’t have to exhaust the time and effort to deal with things that aren’t related to what your business actually does.
If you want your business to be protected, and most owners do since it’s one of their biggest assets, then giving up control of legal issues is a wise investment in terms of both money and time. If you do it right, you can see real results that have a direct impact on your bottom line.
At Launch, all of our clients get a dedicated attorney. Whatsmore, we’ve developed a better system for delivering legal services built to be more beneficial to businesses.
Why Should A Business Give Up Control Of Legal Services?
Giving up worrying about legal services frees up valuable time and energy that can be devoted to running the business, selling your product or service and handling operations in general. You can develop a strong relationship with a lawyer who understands your business goals and can evaluate your risks. Additionally, it’s a good way to limit some of your potential liability: an average small business earning $1 million a year, spends $20,000 a year on disputes and potential or actual lawsuits that may have been avoided. It’s estimated that more than half of all civil lawsuits filed each year are against small businesses. While it can be hard to quantify the value of legal services, it’s equally hard to quantify the real cost that dealing with legal issues has on a business, it’s much more than the dollar figure paid to fight a dispute or lawsuit. What’s your piece of mind worth?
You Can Develop a Strategic Partnership That’s Beneficial To Your Business.
Look for someone who can be a partner, and get to know your business. Using a lawyer for a series of one-off projects or as a legal need arises is inefficient and expensive. Giving up control of legal services in real time to a lawyer who can act as your advisor and counselor is a much more effective way for a business to protect itself and minimize risks and costs.
Developing a relationship with a lawyer who can be a strategic partner to your business understands what you’re trying to accomplish and can offer you advice along the way. It can help prevent or minimize risks with employees, contractors, vendors, the general public and internally.
You Are Almost Certainly Missing Some Potential Risks.
I get it, most businesses don’t think they have any legal issues, they’re not in a dispute and not getting sued by anyone. And, I’m aware this sounds self-serving coming from a lawyer, but you probably have a good number of risks that you aren’t aware of and waiting until one pops up can be devastating to small and medium sized companies.
Lawsuits are bad for business, even if you “win”, fighting one is expensive and will take a considerable amount of time away from operating the company. It's impossible to completely avoid a lawsuit but there are numerous ways to mitigate the situation and try to avoid costly and time consuming litigation. The costs of a lawsuit can easily get into the tens of thousands of dollars and possibly hundreds; most small businesses don’t want to or can’t spend that type of money on a dispute.
There are probably a number of risks you don’t recognize because they aren’t front and center to what you’re doing in the business everyday. You don’t have the time and energy to put into constantly monitoring that. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there though, and ignoring them can have drastic consequences down the road.
Business owners often feel that they need to “recoup” these losses by cutting operating expenses, acquiring new customers or expanding their services to existing customers - all of which will put additional strain on the business. It’s common for business owners to state that a lawsuit or damages nearly put them out of business and had a long term effect on the business.
Your company is unique. There are risks involved that can’t be addressed by pulling a form off the internet, you need someone who can recognize your specific needs and address them accordingly. Some issues can probably be avoided and other mitigated to reduce the harm to your business.
Leverage Someone Else’s Expertise.
As much as we would like to think we are, nobody is an expert in everything. The costs of doing, or not doing, your own legal work are either time, usually a significant amount, or the increased risk that will grow exponentially as your company grows and you continue to ignore your legal and risk issues.
There’s a good chance that legal isn’t your wheelhouse and you don’t have a background in it. Why not leverage the expertise of someone who does have that background? They will be more likely to spot issues that you may have missed, can help you proactively recognize and address legal concerns and will do all of that faster and cheaper than you can (your time is, after all, money).
Let someone whose job it is to manage legal and spot risk take that role for your business. You can get some piece of mind, free up valuable time and develop a strategic partner relationship with someone who can help your business grow and minimize potential issues.
If you’re looking for a trusted legal partner Launch is here to help; reach out to us to set up a call.