Lawyers. The good, bad and the ugly.

Many lawyers get a bad rap, but a good one can be transformational.

“There are only three types of lawyers - able, unable and lamentable”. This quote  came to mind as the SFX drama went to court this week. I imagine that Sam Bankman Fried is hoping his defense is the first and the prosecution the last.

As business leaders, understanding the law matters. For one, there are substantial new pieces of legislation to comply with in the next year. What will the UK's recent online harms bill mean for your business? How about the advent of the new European climate reporting regulations? 

On the other hand, lawyers must be having a good time right now. There is an endless stream of big company bosses badly behaving badly to work with, complex new regulations in many sectors and more activism from both shareholders and consumers than ever before. 

I often wish I had a modicum of legal training. Some of the most impressive brains I have worked alongside have had a legal foundation. In businesses large and small, I have found that good legal advice can be transformational. Similarly, bad advice, especially in startups, can be costly, infuriating and damaging. So here are some of the lessons I have learnt.

Firstly, the best lawyers don’t bang on about the law too much. They talk in simple terms and do not try to befuddle you with jargon and clauses and precedents. I realise that this is a somewhat outlying example, but during the Twitter sale, I served on the transaction committee with two world class lawyers - Marty Korman and Bill Savitt. They were the contract and litigating lawyers respectively and I have no doubt that without their immense skill, we would have succumbed to many more pitfalls. 

There are many ways I could embarrass them with flattery - unimaginable hard work, resilience under very public scrutiny, robustness in the face of insanity from the other side. But it was their simplicity in describing the legal process and the risks that ebbed and flowed with each twist and turn that was extraordinary.

So, before you pick a lawyer, make sure they can give you information in digestible form. I sometimes look to see if they have written any blogs, done any public speaking or published anything for the layperson. You will probably quickly get a sense of how they think.

Secondly, check they are entrepreneurial and solve problems rather than presenting them. However big your company is, I would argue you always want a lawyer, in fact any advisor, accountant or consultant, to think like an entrepreneur. You want creativity, speed and tenacity. You do not want bureaucracy and complexity. 

When we started Lucky Voice neither Nick, the CEO, or I had ever opened a late night karaoke venue before and, it turns out there are a bunch of quite intense legal hurdles to jump through. Mark Spash, our lawyer, was phenomenal. He understood that we were trying to move fast, do something totally new, and he tried to pull down barriers, not put them up. He never complained when we asked him the five hundredth question about licensing laws (and why we had to adhere to them) and he even came to strange locations with documents if they needed to be signed.

I realise that you might be thinking “well it's fine for her, she probably paid a fortune and got this personal service”. Not the case. Entrepreneurial mindset is not about how much you pay, but it is about whether the other person understands what makes you tick and how you want to do business. I worked with one company who were starting an investment fund and thought they had better use a fancy firm as they were trying to build credibility. The firm created chaos, gave them terrible start up advice and wasted a considerable amount of time and money. 

Thirdly, get them to explain how their fee structure works and be alarmed if it's such a dark art that they cannot. I started my own small grant giving foundation, Antigone, and the law firm I used  was far too expensive and cumbersome for the tiny outfit we were, partly because I didn’t stress test how I would be charged. I assumed it was work for a charity therefore costs would be controlled.

Finally, the best results happen when advisors are as involved in the team and strategy as possible. If you're a new founder, it's probably too early to hire certain expertise and so finding partners who can be by your side, is essential. Some founders even offer equity to their professional service firms to keep costs down and cement the relationship. 

And if you are anything like me, the more advice the better, and so outside perspectives from smart people are incredibly helpful. This has been made easier when people are included in company celebrations or away days, invited to lunch or called to discuss something tricky that isn’t a billable moment.

Charles Dickens was famously preoccupied with lawyers, writing “The one great principle of law is to make business for itself”. I hate to contradict Dickens, your honour, but the one principle of the right lawyer is to make your business great.