If you are thinking about hiring a lawyer to help with your business, you may be wondering why you should work with us, your Family Business Lawyer™ rather than a “traditional” business lawyer. What makes us so different from other lawyers?

Last week, in part one of this series, we discussed what it’s like to work with most other business lawyers, describing how their “one-size-fits-all” approach and focus on providing standard legal documents and forms can result in potentially ruinous results for you and your business. And as we pointed out, we know exactly how these lawyers operate because that’s how we used to do things as well… that is, until we discovered a whole new way of serving our clients as your Family Business Lawyer™ firm.

Here in part two, we’ll describe exactly how Family Business Lawyers™ differ from these “traditional” business lawyers, and detail all of the ways we will support, guide, and serve your business when you work with us.

As your Family Business Lawyer™ firm, we serve you and your business in a way that’s far different from other business lawyers—we are the holistic business advisors you have been looking for. We don’t simply incorporate your entity, put in place a few legal documents, or file your trademark application and then never see you again or only see you when something goes wrong.

Instead, we give you peace of mind, knowing that you have not only set your business up right from the start, but that your business systems will continue to keep pace with your company’s growth trajectory throughout its entire evolution. We focus on the nitty gritty details of running your business— negotiating contracts, finding insurance, crunching numbers, and dealing with taxes—so you can maintain the highest level of creative focus to grow your company and serve the right clients and customers in the right way.

Here are a few of the ways we differ from traditional business lawyers, along with the level of service you can expect when you work with us, your Family Business Lawyer firm:

1. Fixed Fees: We’ve done away with billable hours—all of our services are offered on a one flat-fee, or recurring monthly basis that’s agreed to in advance, so there are never any surprises. And, best of all, you’ll choose your fee based on the structure that works best for you and your needs. We’ll help you do that during your LIFT Business Breakthrough Session.
2. Proactive Advisors: We are proactive business advisors, who check in with you on a regular basis, rather than waiting for something bad to happen. By regularly monitoring your business activities (weekly, monthly, or quarterly, depending on the level of planning you choose), we can proactively ensure your company is fully protected and positioned for maximum growth. We will put our legal minds to work to help you grow your business and take the best-calculated risks to achieve the biggest rewards. 
3. Regular & Effortless Communication: We encourage you to regularly contact us as well, and we have a whole team available to serve you. In fact, we’ve thrown out the time clocks, so you never have to be afraid to call with a quick question. Plus, when you call our office to ask a quick question, you won’t have to wait hours or days for a call back. You’ll get your question answered right away. And if you need to schedule a more in-depth legal or strategic call with your lawyer, that call will be scheduled at a time that's most convenient for you, so we can make the very best use of your time and not waste it by forcing you to leave voicemail after voicemail or play an endless game of phone tag.
4. An Ongoing Relationship: We meet with you at least quarterly via our membership programs. Through these programs, we foster a lifetime, ongoing relationship with our clients, so we can guide you through all of your business’ stages—even preparing your business for succession or sale—and always remain focused on helping you get to the next level. Throughout the life of your business, things change: you change, your assets change, your business changes, and the law will definitely change. We are here to help you navigate those changes.
5. A Diverse Array Of Services: Our unique membership programs will keep your company’s legal, insurance, financial, and tax (LIFT) components constantly updated. In fact, we offer you trusted guidance and support for every aspect of your operation: we will ensure all of your deals are properly documented, that you have the right insurance in place at all times, that your new ideas are protected with trademarks and copyrights, that everyone you employ or do business with has robust legal agreements in place, and that your company’s financial systems and tax strategies are generating you the maximum revenue possible.

Furthermore, you will have full access to our trusted team of legal experts for guidance on any legal or financial matter that might come up. And if we can’t help you with a particular issue, we will refer you to a professional we trust who can. With this kind of support, you will never spend more money than necessary or get taken advantage of by unscrupulous salespeople who merely view your business as a cash cow.

Finally, we don’t just take care of your business in the immediate term—we make sure it will continue to be a valuable asset that creates wealth for your family long after you are gone. Many business lawyers overlook this critically important issue. But we know that one day, you will either want to sell your business or you will want to pass it on to your loved ones, so that succeeding generations can benefit from what you’ve built. This is what true legacy is all about.

Businesses that are built right are built with this in mind. And that’s exactly what we help you do—build a business that will one day be able to run without you. This means that you can take vacations, retire, and/or pass on your business to your family, knowing your company will continue to bring in money, serve your clients, and benefit everyone who comes into contact with it.

And really, what could be better than that? Ultimately, isn’t this why you went into business in the first place?

If you think that all of this sounds super expensive, well, you are both right and wrong. If you qualify to work with us, as your Family Business Lawyer™, we can guarantee you that the overall fees you pay us will be substantially less expensive than it would be for you if your business gets into a jam, without your legal, insurance, financial and tax matters handled. Not only that, but our fees will also be far less expensive for your family, partner, and/or clients should you or a key partner die or become incapacitated without getting these matters properly handled.

And if you are still in doubt about being able to afford us, just know this: we’ve never had a single business owner who wanted this kind of comprehensive LIFT support walk out of our office simply because he or she couldn’t afford it. To this end, we make creative financing available to our clients, because we know without a doubt that our programs work and form the foundation for a truly successful business.

Here’s the way we look at it: one day you will need a lawyer. We don’t know why and we don’t know when, but when you do, you will be grateful you can call on us, and we’ll be here to advise you on the best way to move forward or to get you out of a jam.

As your Family Business Lawyer®, we are specially trained to help you keep more money in your business, watch out for risks and pitfalls, handle sticky situations, and effectively tend to the parts of your business that are especially challenging, particularly those involving the legal, insurance, financial, and tax components of your operation.

To give you a taste of how we can support your business, and at the same time, identify any weak spots in your company’s foundation, contact us, your local Family Business Lawyer™ to take our free LIFT 20-Point Assessment. Just taking the 20-Point Assessment is a huge benefit, as it shows you the gaps in your business’ foundation that need the most attention.

From there, you can meet with us, your Family Business Lawyer™ to conduct a more thorough audit of your business, so you can eventually implement our full LIFT Foundation System & Toolkit into your operations. If you are ready to take your business to the next level and reach goals you previously thought were unattainable, schedule your visit with us today.

This article is a service of a Family Business Lawyer™. We offer a complete spectrum of legal services for businesses and can help you make the wisest choices on how to deal with your business throughout life and in the event of your death. We also offer a LIFT Start-Up Session™ or a LIFT Audit for an ongoing business, which includes a review of all the legal, financial, and tax systems you need for your business. Call us today to schedule.

We offer a complete spectrum of legal services for business owners and can help you make the wisest choices on how to deal with your business throughout life and in the event of your death. We also offer you a LIFT Your Life And Business Planning Session, which includes a review of all the legal, insurance, financial, and tax systems you need for your business. Schedule online today.

If you are thinking about hiring a lawyer to help with your business, you may be wondering why you should work with us, your Family Business Lawyer™ rather than a “traditional” business lawyer. What makes us so different from other lawyers?

The best way to explain how Family Business Lawyer™ firms are different requires an explanation of what it’s like to work with most business lawyers. If you’ve already worked with another lawyer to set up your business entity or prepare your entity incorporation documents, this experience will probably sound familiar.

During your first meeting with a traditional business lawyer, you’ll listen to the lawyer explain their services and things may sound complicated and confusing. But as a lawyer, you’ll assume the individual must be smart and knows what he or she is doing, so you’ll nod and answer questions, as if you understand everything.

And because you want to do the right thing for your business, you’ll have the lawyer prepare incorporation documents for you, and you’ll sign those documents, feeling relieved that you’ve finally gotten that taken care of. The lawyer may even give you a corporate records binder to store your important documents in.

From there, you’ll take your fancy business binder home, stick it on a shelf or in a drawer, and then cross “incorporate my business” off on your to-do list, and never look at it or think about it again… until something goes wrong, that is.

You might remember your lawyer saying something about the importance of having legal agreements with your clients, vendors, and partners. But since the matter never evolved beyond mere conversation, you realize your agreements are still incomplete.

You may have even reached out to your lawyer for help. But when you call your lawyer’s office, you almost always get their voicemail, so you leave a message and wait for a call back, which takes several hours at least—and sometimes even days. But by that time, you’ve gotten busy with a bunch of other things, so you never get around to finishing your agreements.

And the same thing happens with all of the other legal and financial issues you thought about getting handled, but never found the time to do, including applying for trademarks and copyrights, purchasing insurance, and maybe even implementing financial systems and tax-saving strategies.

And when you actually do get your lawyer on the phone to ask them questions, a couple of weeks later, you get a bill in the mail for $67.50 for 15 minutes of your lawyer’s time. After getting billed just for asking a few questions, you make a mental note: “Don’t call lawyer ever again unless absolutely necessary.”

After that incident, years go by without you talking to your lawyer. Your business will keep chugging along, and although you know these things are hanging out there incomplete, you are way too busy to worry about it.

Leaving these issues unhandled may even affect your creativity, but you don’t want to call your lawyer, since you know you’ll get a bill in the mail a couple weeks later. Plus, your lawyer doesn’t seem very eager to move things forward, and you are simply too busy to deal with anything that doesn’t contribute to your company’s bottom line.

More time goes by, and then you hear something in the news about a change in the tax laws, but you figure your lawyer would surely contact you if it was something that affected you, so you don’t worry about it. Not to mention, you’d have to dig through several boxes to find your incorporation documents and locate your lawyer’s contact information, and who has time for that?

It’s only when something goes wrong (an employee lawsuit, a client demanding a refund, a vendor dispute, an IRS audit, or you need to borrow money) that you realize with a sinking feeling that not only are your legal agreements incomplete, but your lawyer never customized your operating agreement or bylaws. And you haven’t been holding annual meetings or documenting your meeting minutes, either.

You are at a total loss. You clearly see that you’ve wasted time by not having this all taken care of, and on top of everything else, you are an emotional wreck. And what you may not realize is that you’ve been losing money all along, or at the very least, you haven’t been generating anywhere close to the profits your business is capable of earning.

Far too many business owners learn the hard way that having your company’s legal affairs properly handled is every bit as high a priority as having the right marketing plan or business model in place. This is one of the little-known secrets of the most successful companies—they were set up right from the start.

It’s no secret that the IRS audits unincorporated sole proprietors five- to seven-times more often than incorporated business entities. The reason? The IRS knows that if you don’t have your business set up right, you probably aren’t doing your taxes right, either.

Without a lawyer who is always there to offer you expert advice, you are most likely not hiring and firing right, you likely don’t have enough—or too much—insurance, and your business is probably not structured with the right entity. All of this leads to your company being built on a house of cards, just one accident, audit, or lawsuit away from ruin.

Not too long ago, my own business was set up this way as well, even though I’m a lawyer myself. But when I saw how much my business took off and thrived once I took care of its foundation, I swore I would never let this happen to any of my clients. And since then, I have worked with countless clients, who have all had this same experience.

Unfortunately, most people who hold themselves out as business lawyers, do nothing more for their clients than incorporate their entity or file their trademark and send them on their way. Yet, if that’s all your lawyer is going to do, you could get your business incorporated for a lot less money by using a do-it-yourself (DIY) online legal document service like LegalZoom or Rocket Lawyer.

Your business lawyer should be your trusted counselor, not just a document preparer. As your Family Business Lawyer™ we focus on counseling, consulting, and “consigliere-ing” over creating documents—document creation simply becomes a useful byproduct of our professional relationship. And yet, if you prefer to DIY, we can even help you do that the right way, with a foundation of education beneath you that ensures your DIY plan will work when you need it.

What makes our firm different is that we were built with the needs of growing businesses in mind. Just because you can’t afford your own in-house legal counsel like Fortune 500 companies have on retainer, doesn’t mean you don’t need—or deserve—such counsel.

We understand you are busy, you are growing, you are planning for prosperity, and you value ease, convenience, and efficiency. You want to know you’ve made the best decisions for your company, and all of the tedious parts of running a business—crunching numbers, negotiating contracts, dealing with insurance, and managing taxes—are properly handled, so you can focus your energy and passion on growing your business to the fullest extent possible.

That’s our focus as well. We’ve developed unique business systems for our clients that were previously available only to the likes of Google, Facebook, and Zappos. With us in your corner, you will have the guidance and support you need to build a business of true meaning and significance—as well as serious profitability.

Next week in part two of this series, we will detail all of the different ways us, your Family Business Lawyer™ will support, guide, and serve your business and how those services differ from other business lawyers. Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about our programs or schedule a visit to consult with us about your business, contact us, your local Family Business Lawyer™ today.

This article is a service of a Family Business Lawyer™. We offer a complete spectrum of legal services for businesses and can help you make the wisest choices on how to deal with your business throughout life and in the event of your death. We also offer a LIFT Start-Up Session™ or a LIFT Audit for an ongoing business, which includes a review of all the legal, financial, and tax systems you need for your business. Call us today to schedule.

We offer a complete spectrum of legal services for business owners and can help you make the wisest choices on how to deal with your business throughout life and in the event of your death. We also offer you a LIFT Your Life And Business Planning Session, which includes a review of all the legal, insurance, financial, and tax systems you need for your business. Schedule online today.