When I was an associate at a large corporate law firm (MANY years ago), our clients would pay for our dinners from fancy restaurants and a car service to take us home whenever we had to work past 8 pm… which was just about every night. You might hear this and think we were fleecing our clients by having them pay for unnecessary lawyering; but let me assure you, this was not the case.
These people worked very closely with us: they were on (or were aware of) all of our conference calls; we had to explain and get approval for any significant changes to the legal documents; and to ensure that we were always working to fulfill their goals, our clients required that we had a complete understanding of the business side of every deal. They knew exactly what we were doing on their behalf so when the bill came, they had no problem paying.
So what’s the point of this little story? To show you that even the extremely wealthy are still concerned about getting the best bang for their legal buck. The last thing they would (or you should) do is to pay for lawyering that will not help your business in any meaningful way. David G. Ebert And Warren E. Friss pinpoint some of the steps you can take to get the most out of your lawyers.
