How do you avoid lawyers, while still protecting yourself and partners?

November 20th, 2009, 10:26 am · 5 Comments · posted by Nick Haschka

Nick Haschka

After learning the hard way that we needed to focus on our passion, the project on exploring solar opportunities in Arizona began to heat up. Our first read-out got the project’s sponsor increasingly excited about moving forward with a large investment in a solar power plant. We learned that our investor needed a team to begin the early stage development planning, so strung together a more qualified team of our contacts to help us put the proposal together, and went to meet with the investor.

It was at this point where things started to get complicated. As soon as we started involving more people, especially since we couldn’t afford to pay big consulting fees, questions started to arise about how to share benefits.

We discussed a variety of options, and ended up figuring out something that we thought would work, and desperately wanted to avoid involving lawyers.

Are there good legal resources out there that can help us avoid lawyers?

When does a startup need to have a lawyer to help with ongoing contractual matters with clients?

Share this post:

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Categories

routerguy says:

November 20, 2009 at 11:15 am

From experience, it pains me to say that you need to involve a lawyer from the very beginning. As tempting as it may be, the consequences for not doing so are painful and expensive. Get recommendations from trusted sources and lawyer up now.

BeachBumBob says:

November 24, 2009 at 6:04 pm

Routerguy,

Might be right, but I got a lot of help from the U.S. Gov, Small Business Admin from a Div in their orgaization called SCORE. These are or have been very successful business owners as well as lawyers that are now retired, but want to help business owner like you.

So you might want to check them out. Another book that I used get help from the gov to build my pizza restaurant into a large chain was from a research company called “Information USA, by Mathew Lesko”.

I am sure it has been up dated, man it was it a wealth of information and pointed my in the right direction.

BIG HOT IRR KING says:

December 3, 2009 at 9:38 am

I am a vet of 114 court cases as a plaintiff, defendant and self ProPer paralegal. I’m also an investor that analyzed 68 countries, their legal system, attorneys, taxes, etc. in person. We are “lawsuit crazy” but that’s part of the American system of checks and balances. #1 place for investors, USA. #1 State for investments? California! I have over 600+ buy sells as an investor, and 5 passports filled as a real “investor traveler”. In California, it’s very easy to make 50% on your money without attorneys and it’s easy to buy good investments for under 25 cents on the dollar. All you have to do is get a “finance or accounting” degree & read 100 to 150 pages a day on investments & economics. There are only about 50 real “IRR GENIUSES” in California, and 90% of them are grads with accounting or finance degrees.

December 3, 2009 at 9:45 am

PS: I have made “asset” purchases for 2-12 cents on the dollar this year! My expected gross return will be about 800-2000% over 5-8 years. The IRR will be established after costs and cash flows are concluded by the selling escrow. Estimated Gross sales on 2009 asset purchases, about $5-17m.

Uncle David says:

January 14, 2010 at 4:14 pm

Trust me! Do what routerguy says.

Orange County Register