Choosing a Lawyer

The selection of a professional by a lay person is often a dicey matter. Choosing a lawyer is no different. What qualities should you look for? What are the indicators of a lawyer to avoid?

1. Don’t use your lawyer cousin Bernie just because he’s a nice guy. Knowledge of the fashion industry is more important than having a grandmother in common, especially for technical matters such as factoring and license agreements. You don’t want to pay for your lawyer’s on-the-job training. Competence is essential.

2. Don’t use a wimp. Your lawyer should be forceful. However, screamers and loud mouths should be avoided—they tend to be deal killers.

3. Your lawyer should write well. If you can’t understand the contracts your lawyer writes, there’s a good chance a court will have the same problem if it needs to be enforced.

4. Your lawyer should be thorough. Though a quick mind is an asset, your lawyer should have the time and temperament to consider all the issues involved in the particular matter and then proceed to address them in a careful and well-reasoned manner. Some lawyers simply don’t have the patience to deal with all the issues.

5. Your lawyer should be responsive. A lawyer who is always in a “meeting” when you call is frequently a lazy lawyer.

6. Get good value. Almost all lawyers you retain will charge you based on an hourly rate. But the charge is not merely a function of that rate. If lawyer #1 is twice as efficient time-wise as lawyer #2, but lawyer #1 has an hourly rate 50% more than lawyer #2, lawyer #1 is still cheaper in the long run. The practice of law is odd in that it may reward a lawyer for his or her inefficiency; the longer the task takes, the more you pay.

7. Your lawyer should have good judgement. Your lawyer should know not only a great deal about the law but also about what makes people tick.

8. You should receive the personal services of the lawyer you retain. Unless the work involves an area of expertise (e.g., tax law) about which he or she is not knowledgeable, your lawyer should not fob off your work to another lawyer with whom you are less comfortable. And be wary of firms that overload matters with more than one lawyer when it’s unnecessary

9. Make sure you are personally comfortable with your lawyer. This is perhaps the most important point of all. As with any other human relationship, the comfort factor is key. If you’re not comfortable, you won’t communicate well.

USING (AND NOT ABUSING) YOUR LAWYER.

Using a lawyer well is a true art.

1. Use your lawyer for any contract of consequence. Let your lawyers become more nearsighted from reading the fine print. Don’t do it on your own.

2. Negotiate directly the key business terms of a deal; your business counterpart doesn’t want to negotiate the business terms with a lawyer. But consult your lawyer before you begin and conclude the negotiation of business points—your lawyer just might have insights as to important business matters. And there may also be some business issues that have legal ramifications you need to be aware of in your business negotiations. Your lawyer should advise you about them.

3. Term sheets play an important role in managing the deal process in a cost-effective way. A term sheet should specify the basic business terms the parties have agreed-upon as well as any important legal terms that are not customary. Some lawyers go to a full-flown contract without doing a term sheet. That is a big mistake. It slows the process down and needlessly runs up legal fees. On the other extreme, some companies actually write a shorter version of the contract as a term sheet. Such a path results in a double negotiation and a huge waste of time and money.

4. Advise your lawyer clearly about both your short-term and long-term business goals, both as to the specific matter and your business in general. The more information your lawyer has, the better your goals will be served.

5. Consider the business ramifications of your legal actions. Years ago, as a young associate in a big law firm, I represented a company that sued a customer which it claimed had stolen a novel product idea. Long after the case began, the President of the company realized that he had foolishly lost a good customer over a relatively small matter. Don’t have your lawyer litigate when it’s not in your business interests. On the other hand, you don’t want to sit on your rights and get a reputation of being a soft touch.

6. Give your lawyer enough time to do the job well. Sometimes, there is no choice but to ask your lawyer to complete a task very rapidly. But there’s often a price that’s paid for that “emergency”—issues are frequently missed or not well-handled. Don’t be the kind of client who always calls his lawyer at the last minute. That practice puts an unnecessary burden on your lawyer, and will often prevent you from getting the best results.

7. Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish. Especially when you have a lot of money on the line, competence is essential; the last thing you want to do is economize a bit and get an unsatisfactory result. Unfortunately, in the fashion world, clients too often consider only cost and not cost-effectiveness.