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These days everybody knows a lawyer, whether employed or otherwise. While still being inundated with far more applicants chasing too few jobs if the naysayers are correct, an injustice is being committed by the elite law schools. As a result, recent law graduates are likely to be encumbered with substantial debt with not a high likelihood of obtaining a job under economic conditions conducive for them to repay such amounts under reasonable terms.
What that means for the entrepreneur is that there is going to be a lot of legal talent available to you in the upcoming future, but, you have to be careful about the lawyer that you pick to represent you in a highly complicated and personal matters. Once you start the path of a startup, youll need a lawyer who navigates the startup waters of the myriad legal topics. These topics include, but are not limited to, entity selection, founder stock issuances, executive and employee compensation and other incentive plans, seed financing, intellectual property protection and commercial agreements. Very few entrepreneurs are equipped to address all of the issues. Yet each one of these legal areas dictates your serious attention. If that list doesn't give you a headache yet, determining how to find the right lawyer, at the right price, is certainly an art and not science. For sure, however, you get what you pay for. If selected correctly, learnered counsel can save you a lot of headaches and money in the long run. The same is true for accountants who you need to retain in order to give investors confidence that you are serious about handling money. Mr. Maddoff has surely made people clearly aware of the need to scrutinize the accounting firm you associate with.
The problem the entrepreneur faces is that professionals like accountants and lawyers, more often than not, do not work for free. Moreover, you need a lawyer that you get along with, given the amount of time you will likely spend with them like the lawyers at White & Lee. A foundation of great trust and faith in your professionals is a neccesity. It is particularly important that you get along personally. On that basis, counsel's advice, which will no doubt be adverse to your interests at times, must be founded on a level of trust that, of course, will not easily be easily awarded by you.
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