What Clients Liked
“It's really important that lawyers understand business goals and risk levels, and that those change over time. I think lawyers should be somewhat more conservative than the CEO and organization, but not wildly out of step.”
“For me, this is simple.
The best lawyers flag the challenges for you and then get creative on figuring out how to solve for them. The worst lawyers just flag the issue, tell you whatever you're trying to do can't be done, and stop there. Lots of people (lawyers and non-lawyers) just tell you what the problems are but don't give you options or solutions. I always find that lazy thinking. It's easy to lob in grenades from the peanut gallery. The harder work is then figuring out the best path forward.”“I appreciate lawyers that dig in, drive the client and keep the process moving forward. The best lawyers are highly organized and extremely communicative. They take the time to assess your knowledge about a given situation and then raise your level of understanding."
“I like it when I'm given a range of possible options, and the pros and cons to each one. Then together we can focus on the right approach.”
“What clients love and inevitably feel are the best lawyers are the Clear Communicators. They constantly keep their clients updated on everything that is going on and what has been filed. The gold standard ironically is to keep it short and simple. Bullet point key issues and at the end briefly outline potential outcomes, good, bad, and otherwise.”
“I love it when lawyers understand the business problem I'm trying to solve and become a thought partner in how to solve it rather than just blindly applying their legal opinion, absence of context. For complex, multi-step projects (like a venture financing): I like when lawyers clearly lay out steps, timelines, and communicate regularly about status.”
“I like the ability of a good lawyer to help me make risk-adjusted decisions.
The worst is when you get in a mode “the lawyers will or won't let me do it.” It's never black and white and a good attorney encourages you to assess risk and make the right decision for you.”“Assuming they're helping me negotiate something out, I want someone who's done deals like this before. Ideally, they also know the other party or the other party's lawyers. They should be able to provide some insights as to what is important to the other party, where we can negotiate, and where dealbreakers might be. They are a negotiation partner, not someone I've hired to do a task.”
“I've had lawyers who were dealmakers by nature and the opposite. The dealmaker was sometimes too eager to make compromises, but because I understood all the aspects of the deal he was fine taking my “no” as an answer. The other lawyer was a Doberman—enjoyed the fight more than making the deal. This was important with a lot of our Hollywood deals because the other side was that way too. My lawyer had a reputation as a fighter, so they paid attention to us. Again, because I understood all the parts of what we were negotiating on I was able to weigh out the risks and decide where to stand firm vs. give a little. To do so, I had to disagree with my lawyer a few times and tell him to back down on certain points. He would explain the risks and make sure I understood, and then move ahead. We worked well together, but if I just followed his lead we never would have closed a deal.”
“Responsiveness is key. An attorney that gets back to me in a timely manner always earns my respect. Even if it's “hey, I'm a bit tied up for now but will get back to you shortly,” I appreciate it. When I reach out and don't hear back from my attorney, I can't trust that they give a shit about our relationship, and I have fired counsel because of this in the past.”
“Being a technical person, I like the specificity of language that lawyers use. It's very similar in structure you will get from a software engineer.
The two professions are remarkably close in some ways.”“Having a great lawyer is one of the most important elements in my business of music and for any business you might be in. A great lawyer will help you navigate the difficult language of law in your best interest and a bad one could advise you to sign something that could come back and cause problems later. Choose wisely.”
“Understanding my business they are representing is important but very rare. What are the drivers of growth, and what will potentially derail, etc. This allows them to actually make recommendations instead of just dumping a bunch of options on me.”
“Being insanely meticulous with details so I can trust that I don't always have to be. I'm the CEO. Especially when starting a company, I have every function reporting to me, and details can fall through the cracks. Reminding me of important things and following up is super important.”
“The lawyers I've liked working with are ones who explain the options and help educate me about what we're doing. I want and need to understand whatever the nuances are of what we're talking about. I even want to understand all the boilerplate stuff because it's there for a reason and I want to know why. Hopefully I only need to learn all that once and we can build on it from there. For example, the entertainment industry had very different boilerplate than the advertising industry and different expectations of IP ownership. The differences were significant but buried in decades of standard practices.”
“Best traits are advocacy, integrity, and accessibility. I want to work with lawyers that have solid knowledge of their practice, are able to resolve things quickly, and provide sound advice and offers up scenarios that could occur.”
“Two things stand out for me. 1) Empathy – the understanding that lawyers are expensive for companies and to maximize staying focused, minimizing extra work and being a thoughtful partner to the company. 2) Speed and responsiveness – making the client feel like the lawyer is on top of and ahead on things so the client doesn't need to keep track and check in.”
“I need to be able to trust that my attorney knows when I needed to be reined in vs. when I have room to make my own decisions. This means they need perspective on what kind of advice is needed. Knowing when to provide “this is what you have to do” vs. “here are the legal parameters, but there's a comfort zone here for your interpretation” is super helpful.”