Machinery Companies: Want to Save on Legal Fees? Read This

7/16/2011

If you want to save money on legal fees, here are the best tips I can give you:

Use a business lawyer, not an accountant or Internet service, to set up your business.
Instead of going it on your own or misusing a form, use a business lawyer to draft your sales contracts or terms and conditions in a manner consistent with the business risks your company is willing to accept.
If you believe that a dispute is developing. call a lawyer before the lawsuit is filed.

With respect to effective legal representation, earlier is almost always better and cheaper. A properly established business can limit risk, as can a well written contract. Many disputes can be diffused or resolved relatively cheaply if dealt with before the lawsuit stage.

Unfortunately, machinery and equipment companies, perhaps more than other companies, often call after a problem develops. Why? One word: Engineers.

Machinery and equipment companies are typically run by engineers. Engineers are wonderful people: They design and build real things -- things that benefit all of us. They understand difficult subjects, such as math and science. They often have soaring imaginations, allowing them to build things the rest of us cannot even imagine.

All the qualities that make engineers such engaging and important people tend to make them, as a group, challenging to represent. Being talented and intelligent, they tend to overestimate their ability to deal with legal issues on their own and often try to represent themselves, which can be damaging. They also may call later than the optimal time. Further, engineers tend to deal with issues that are black and white, while legal issues are every shade of gray. This means that the "intuitive" answer to a legal issue for an engineer may be incorrect.

So there you go, guys. If you want to save money on legal fees, call early. If you can!

Wil Ferch

7/21/2011 04:38:13 am

With no malice of intent...I take exception to most of what you say in your post.

First of all...this isn't 1950. Most Machinery companies I know of are (today) run by accountants or business people, not engineers. I am talking large multi-nationals, not small mom-and-pop fab shops, so I may back-pedal a bit depending upon your frame of reference. Engineers are fully outside their realm of responsibility when it comes to the question of whether or not to enlist legal help....either too early, or too late. Other people in their orgs will have a say in this..not the engineers.

Second,....you over-generalize engineers and where "their heads are at"..and how they are are given a sweeping...and common.... characterization. I think you would also bristle at over-generalizations of how the general poplulation views lawyers...no? I think you would agree there are all types of any kind of people.

I will agree that one should enlist professionals for their professional services....doctors for medical issues....lawyers for legal issues.....engineers for their expertise. But don't showcase engineers as a focus group to illustrate the wrong doings of getting the wrong people involved in the wrong area of expertise. That is an unfair and sweeping generalization.

John Watkins link

7/21/2011 07:51:13 am

Wil:

You make some valid points, first I want to reiterate the main point of the post: Companies, including machinery companies, increase both their legal risk and their legal fees by trying deal with contracts, NDAs and other legal documents on their own, dealing with disputes on their own, or otherwise trying to look out for their own legal interests, and then only calling a lawyer when it is either too late to do anything, or when a simple issue has turned into a major problem.

As to your frame of reference point, it has some validity. My frame of reference is not multi-national companies with 10 in-house lawyers, but successful small and medium-sized companies that are typically owned and run by the owners, who are typically engineers.

On your point about over-generalization, it also has some validity, but I think it steers away from the basic message of the post. First, I hope that the post made clear the extremely high regard in which I hold engineers. Second, yes there are engineers that do not fit the framework outlined in the post.

That said, having done this job for many years, patterns have a habit of repeating themselves, and generalizations can be useful in helping to point out mistakes that people, or groups of people, have made in the past. And, hopefully, helping others to avoid making the same mistake in the future.

I can only say that this post reflects my honest experience, and, from feedback I have gotten from other lawyers, a fairly common experience.

Does it apply to everyone? No. Does it apply to a lot of companies? Yes. Is the main point of the post valid? I think it is.

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Machinery Companies: Want to Save on Legal Fees? Read This

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