How to Be Your Own Lawyer... Without Being a Fool A Practical Guide for the Entrepreneur Who Wants to Save Time and Money Through Informed Self-Help, Preparation and the Efficient Use of Legal Counsel

The authors of this book have close to 75 years of experience advising business clients from new entrepreneurs to mature enterprises. During this time, they have seen countless examples of seemingly intelligent entrepreneurs trying to "save" time and money by acting as their own attorneys in negotiating business transactions. Unfortunately, the advent of the internet has made it much easier for "fools" to get into trouble by providing seemingly infinite numbers of downloadable contracts and forms. Most of the time, the unwary entrepreneur exposes himself or herself to great risk by using such documents without qualified legal counsel. Occasionally, however, the opposite can be true and downloaded documents from the internet can trigger a request for assistance from legal counsel, which most often leads to a successful outcome. The authors decided to write this book with two principal audiences in mind. First, although they recommend that you always consult an attorney, they wanted to offer to those entrepreneurs who choose not to heed this advice, certain pointers on how best to utilize several of the most common legal forms and documents they may try to download from one of the so-called "legal" websites or obtain from other sources. Second, through discussion of various issues and the use of examples provided in the book, they want to re-iterate and re-enforce the notion that trying to be your own lawyer is ill-advised, and thus speak to a second, and hopefully much larger audience- entrepreneurs who will realize they need to hire lawyers, but want to use them efficiently.