Take a look at the section below, from a contract a client gave me to review today. What is wrong with this picture? Found it yet? It’s at the end, where the words say “One Hundred Seventy Five Thousand Dollars” and the numerals say “$100,000.” Notice that this is not a small-change mistake. It potentially means […]
For those who do not receive goodnews by e-mail, you can view all editions online here. Of course, it’s just easier to become a subscriber.
I know it’s not front-page news that big law firms charge big fees. I should know; I worked at a couple of them. Still, I’ve been out of that world for a long time now, and one forgets. So, without naming any names, here’s a story: A startup client of mine recently secured a significant […]
I have young children, so I’ve been frequenting playgrounds over the last 8 years or so. I’ve noticed, during this time, that there’s an incredible degree of sameness to them. Something has homogenized our playgrounds. They are almost uniformly boring. One example: I noticed that a staple of the playgrounds of my youth, the see-saw, […]
Among the benefits of leading a small legal practice is that it keeps all of the relationships close and manageable. I know my clients well, and I serve them directly (not via associates, paralegals or other intermediaries). Larger law firms are, well, larger. This means that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of people affiliated […]
Lawyers, like everyone else working for a business, need to add value. I see so much legal work, however, that adds no value whatsoever. The economics term for it is “deadweight loss.” The client might as well just take out a few hundred-dollar bills and burn them. This blog post is the first of what […]
In developing a streamlined, cost-effective set of legal formation documents for startups (organizational, not funding documents), I have been giving a lot of thought to the essential areas that entrepreneurs/new companies need to cover. It’s not a huge universe. Here’s what I have come up with: Ownership split (if more than one founder) and vesting. […]
In my last post, I made a comment about startups not needing 45-page LLC agreements. I guess there’s even worse being perpetrated out there. A friend, who also represents startups, reports the following: Apropos of your point, I am in the process of negotiating a 2-member, early stage operating agreement which spans 70 pages What […]
I love Fred Wilson’s blog. Sure, he’s a smart VC, but he also writes well and believes in sharing his knowledge. I always learn something from his posts. A little more than a year ago, Fred issued a challenge to startup lawyers: to keep legal fees down for startup investment transactions. Way down. In his […]
Here’s a lawyer secret: we recycle our documents. Over and over and over. We even have a fancy word for it – “precedent.” For the most part, the use of precedent is efficient and benefits the client. Few would want to pay for their agreements to be drafted from scratch, when a document from a […]