Later, litigator
Great lawyers don't just have a strong understanding of the law. In fact, drafting standard legal documents according to customer needs is already getting replaced by Al. What great lawyers do is much harder to replace. They are great project managers, effectively communicating and managing all stakeholders to a desired schedule. They are great at customer service, through responsiveness to calls and emails. They are great negotiators, working with you as a partner to ensure optimal outcomes on the highest risk and highest value aspects of the contract or deal. They are proactive, informing you on trends and offering access to their network. They are great estimators, telling you with a high degree of accuracy what something will cost. For most of my 30 year career I have been responsible for dealing with lawyers on behalf of my companies and I've been exposed to many bad lawyers who ran bad processes. But the great ones like Jason at Golbey Law, Ed and Laura at Osler and Chase at Dentons really stand out and have made me appreciate how valuable it is for founders to ensure they have a strong lawyer in their corner. The investment of time to find them will pay off in spades.
In the meantime, here are some of my lessons learned and tips for effective management of lawyers until you find one of the greats.
1) Lawyers work for you -I think sometimes founders are intimidated by lawyers and take their word as gospel since they are seen as experts or feel they have to wait patiently to hear back. Instead, keep in mind that this is your company and you know the things that are most important for you to accomplish in any contract or deal, even if those might be different than the legal advice you are getting. And unfortunately sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease so don't hesitate to assign or request deadlines when you need documents turned around quickly to meet your schedule.
2) If you don't know who the project manager is, it's you - often there are 5 or more parties at the table (a founder, current shareholders, a VC and legal counsel for both sides) and left unassigned I've seen all parties blame each other when a deal slips at the end of the process. Instead, try to reverse engineer every step that is required and assign a target date and owner for each of those steps and email that schedule out to get approval from all parties on the plan. Then simply email updates daily or weekly with what is ahead and behind schedule, who you are waiting for and what people need to prepare for next.
3) Pre-approved caps - Most of us have at one point been surprised by a big legal bill. To avoid this, you should ALWAYS get your lawyer to provide an estimate and then instruct them in writing that they do not have authorization to bill you above that cap without your permission to proceed. At least then it will be in your control to understand what is driving up the extra hours and if that is necessary.
4) After one set of revisions, get everyone on a call - sometimes the back and forth with the counsel for a big company will kill you with the death of 1000 cuts as each turnaround of docs creates another delay and adds more cost. A lawyer that is not motivated to get a deal done has nothing to gain by agreeing to any item that increases risk for their client. Instead, I have found it very effective after the first set of redlines and revisions to get the business stakeholders and lawyers from both sides in a meeting together to discuss in layman's terms what is acceptable to get the deal done. The business owners are often comfortable with reasonable risks and understand the nature of the project better, which gives the lawyers license to absolve themselves of certain blame and switch gears to just getting the legal language nailed down.
