What to Look for in a Lawyer
Swainson Miki Peskett LLP Partners, Jordan W. Smith, Ryan C. Kemp, and Graeme R. Swainson discuss what to look for in a lawyer. Learn how to spot the red flags of hiring a lawyer to ensure maximum return on the investment of legal counsel.
SMP | A Legal Podcast is a business first legal podcast discussing trending legal topics with the occasional help of top industry professionals. SMP | A Legal Podcast is hosted by 3 of Swainson Miki Peskett LLP’s partner, Jordan W. Smith, Ryan C. Kemp, and Graeme R. Swainson.
Find new episodes of SMP | A Legal Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Material in this podcast is available for information purposes only and is a high level summary of the subject matter. It is not, and is not intended to be, legal advice. You should first obtain professional legal advice prior to taking any action on the basis of any information contained in this podcast. This podcast is copyrighted. For permission to reproduce this podcast, please email Swainson Miki Peskett LLP.
Transcription
Graeme R. Swainson
“And welcome back to ‘SMP | A Legal Podcast’. My name is Graeme Swainson. I’m here with Jordan Smith.”
Jordan W. Smith
“Hi.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“And here with Ryan Kemp.”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Graeme, Jordan.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“So, again, thanks for listening or watching, however you’re consuming us today. Today we’re going to talk about what to look for when hiring a lawyer. Now this is, you know, coming from an angle of, you know, Jordan, your private business owner. Let’s say, you’ve got some legal work that needs to get done. There’s a ton of law firms out there, there’s a ton of lawyers out there. You know, start us off. What would you advise private business owners, what are they looking for in their first lawyer. Maybe they’re starting a business. What do they need to look for?”
Jordan W. Smith
“Absolutely. So for me, I believe that the first thing is it’s, it’s a relationship. So, it’s obviously a business relationship, but it’s an advisory relationship. So, I think the first thing is you have to get to know, if you’re a client, you should get to know that lawyer. You should get to know the law firm. I mean, do the due diligence. I don’t think, you know, legal services can be a little bit daunting because I think there’s this, maybe lawyers do it, where we present in a way that is almost, maybe inaccessible. Which is the wrong way, I think, to present lawyers. [The wrong way to do it would be] where you ought to not ask questions and you know, we know everything the client doesn’t, and so you can’t question what we do or how we do it. I think that’s, I don’t agree with that thinking. I think if I, as a client, I would want to know how the lawyer that I’m speaking with would run a file, who he or she is, or how they think. Whether or not they understand the industry that I’m in, if they seem to care about having an actual relationship with me as a client, if I think they are going to take my phone call. This is the kind of high level stuff and we can get into some of the details, but at a high level to me, it is really like an interview. It should be. I’m quite comfortable having those conversations. Sometimes I find clients will phone and we will have a conversation, especially ones that are just starting the business and just getting going and I think they are maybe a little intimidated to even ask questions and not sure if they can. I’d rather have a client ask questions at the front end. It’s much better to know, going in, that we are on the same page. What do you think, Ryan?”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Yeah, absolutely. It is, it is a relationship based business. You know, certainly, you want to have open communication with a client at the very least, so that hopefully, you make a connection. I mean, what I’ve found, is that, you know, it’s one thing to be able to, get a nibble on the hook, but in order for that relationship to last years into the future, it really is a matter of fit. I think the reality is you can’t be all things to all people. You know, us as lawyers, we like to work in the black and white as much as possible but fit can be a really difficult thing to, I think, put your thumbprint on. It’s, it can be, multifaceted. Let’s be honest, not all businesses, require a national presence. There’s some scalability there. I think just personality fit is important too. The type of client, their disposition, matching them with the right fit, within the law firm. So there’s a whole host of things that can get into it. I think you have those conversations that are important to have, and that might be what gets your soft of foot in the door. But, I think one of the big things in determining whether that relationship lasts is, just fit, and you know, trying to figure out what that means. It can mean different things to different lawyers and different things to different clients.”
Jordan W. Smith
“Nobody is.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“And it is, you know, something that we see all the time, exactly that fit, clients and lawyers sometimes that work really well together. Sometimes, not so much. I think a fatal assumption that a lot of people make is that all lawyers are, that a lawyer at a firm across the street, and someone at our shop here, if they’re doing the same practice, if they’re working in the same areas, it’s basically, you know, six of one, half dozen of the other. That is, it can be really frustrating for a lawyer when you’re trying to differentiate. And people have that attitude that, well, all lawyers are the same. It’s like saying all realtors are the same, all contractors are the same. You know, it’s just not true. For clients, when they’re looking for that lawyer, they really need to, I think, kind of take a look in the mirror and at their own business and say,’what do I actually need?’ Who is out there that’s going to be able to provide. It’s something we were kind of talking about just before we got on camera here. If I’m a tenant business owner, if I’m someone that doesn’t like to be aggressive, if I’m an easygoing person, then maybe I want a bit of a, you know, bulldog for a lawyer, someone that’s going to go out and negotiate aggressively for me. And we can compliment each other that way. If I’m the opposite, if I’m a really aggressive business owner that goes out there and, you know, takes a lot of risks and that, maybe I need a lawyer that’s going to pull me back a little. You know, tell me ‘no’ sometimes and tell me, you know, take a breath and think about it. And so again, that goes to, how is the fit going to be? If you call up that lawyer, are they going to answer the phone? Do you have that relationship with them where you know that they’re going to be there? Do they understand you and your business enough that they’re going to be able to provide that solid advice? So let’s talk about availability, because that’s, I think, a big thing people consider when they’re talking about lawyers.”
Jordan W. Smith
“I agree, Graeme. So, a few things. Number one, about availability. You can say whatever you want. Of course, actions speak louder than words, as we all know. And so you can say all you want to a client. You know, I’m going to be available, I’m reachable. If I’m not reachable, there’s somebody else as a point of contact that you can have at the end of the day. It’s going to get old pretty quick if that’s not true, that is the very first, in my view, that’s table stakes. That’s the most important thing right out the gate, just is. Part of that, in terms of hiring a lawyer is, I mean, you’re really hiring a firm. You’re hiring a firm with a point a contact being that relationship, you could call it a relationship manager, but the primary point of contact. It’s important to have that point of contact because you need someone to quarterback things and you need to know, when you really need to get something done, who is accountable for ensuring performance, ensuring that the files are going well. So, that’s all true. You’re not going to hire one person for your business, you need a team of people. So, to your point, yes, availability is important. Part of availability is not just how available you may be because maybe you’re on a cruise somewhere and you can’t be contacted for whatever reason, or frankly, we tell our clients all the time about succession planning first, and their business law firms need to do the same thing. You know, we have to have succession planning. If the point of contact you have and the person who knows everything about your business dies or is just, unreachable, then what happens? So, there’s that, also the point about just different personalities at a firm and there’s different fits, that’s fair. That also goes to the point of having different personalities within your own firm. You don’t have to have a group thing, you don’t have, you know, for us, I know here we have a pretty diverse range of people and personalities.”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Yeah. Just another point on availability. I mean, I don’t know what your guys’ experiences are, but you know, one of the most common gripes that I hear from scorned clients of others is that they can’t get ahold of whoever it was in a timely manner. You know, that always is surprising to hear because, you know, obviously, what we do is stressful, it’s complex, but getting back to people is, I mean, that’s about as easy as it gets and don’t misconstrue what I’m saying. I’m not advocating for, you get an email at two o’clock in the morning on a Monday morning or whatever and you have to respond within 15 minutes. But like within 24 hours, I don’t think is an overly high bar to meet. You know, you can develop different systems, batch email processing, what have you that allow you to do that. I think that goes a long way. It’s not something overly difficult. Even if a client reaches out just to say ‘Yep, we’re on it and we will get back to you’ or ‘We’re looking at it’ or ‘We will get back in a couple days’ like that, I think you’d be surprised at how far that goes. I think another thing that is important, is to inform clients who are looking for a law firm is to really look at themselves and figure out what kind of lawyer they need. Number one, again, I talked about scalability. Some clients prefer to, to keep a number of firms in the stable. If their preference is to bring it all under one house, obviously the client needs to know their business well enough to know what kind of areas they will need support in if they are looking at a one-stop shop. The next thing is clients being a little self-aware. You know, Graeme sort of alluded to it before, you know, and sometime it just take repetitions for that particular client to kind of know where that, where that fit is. But certain clients are much more apt to want to say, i don’t want say in the background elements, but have us play a more active, council-type role on a file to provide practical advice, to provide input on decision making. Where others are, I think, much more inclined to be hands on. They want to drive decision making processes and they sort of, as a little bit more of a conduit for communication, more than an active participant in the decision making process. So I think it’s important for clients to have an honest dialogue with themselves and figure out what is the scope of service that I need from my council. How do I view them fitting into a particular deal or a particular file?”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think you were talking about how to hire a lawyer but that also kind of gets into, you know, how to use a lawyer too. How to involve a lawyer too, and how to involve lawyers on deals, which we’re going to save for another podcast episode. But again, back to what you’re looking for when hiring a lawyer and I’ll piggyback off Jordan’s point about hiring a firm, not a lawyer. You want to be able to know number one, that if Jordan’s on vacation, I can call Ryan, I can call someone else. There’s going to be someone else available. Frankly, we all like that. It’s probably one of the benefits of working at a firm – is that we actually can go on vacation and somebody’s going to be covering our desk/. So, a hundred percent for the client they want to know that too. They don’t expect you to, notwithstanding we get some emails at 2:00 AM on Monday mornings, but most clients are reasonable and you know that you’re not going to be a hundred percent available all of the time. Granted, I know, that yeah, clients hate hearing from their lawyer ‘Well, I’m really busy, as if that’s not extremely insulting to the client as if they’re not very busy as well. But again, it’s just that getting back to people saying ‘Yeah, I received this email, I’m on it’, people really appreciate that. Then people really appreciate, again, if I’m not on it, they know that someone else is going to be on it. You have that supportive team. That again, if I specialize in commercial real estate law, if I have a client that needs some help with you know, corporate reorganization, they know that I’m not going to try and be a jack of all trades and try to do that work myself. Quite frankly, you want the best person on the job. So, that’s another thing to look out for. When you’re hiring a lawyer, when you’re hiring that law firm. Is it one person doing all the work or do you have a team of lawyers available to help you out with stuff? So, let’s go on to another point that we can talk about. You know, when people are out there looking for lawyers, talking to lawyer, trying to figure out the next firm, what are some red flags that people can look for?”
Jordan W. Smith
“The first, we should just mention the first obvious one is, you have to talk to one person to get the work done all the time. Unfortunately, a lot of law firms are still structured in a way where the idea of controlling that work, the idea of getting credit, being the rainmaker that you know, it’s my client, I gotta deal with it. Which I think is a very, in my opinion, a very, kind of destructive element to the client relationship and, frankly, to firms. That’s another conversation for another date. I think the first thing is, you want to see is am I able to get access to subject area experts, you know, in this firm? Or am I having to phone this, stop gap person to be able to get access to these other people? One thing I think I’ve had clients share with me for reasons they leave certain firms is just that reason. Without, obviously, going into the details, I think law firms are sometimes structured in a way where that mentality seems to affect firms of all sizes. It’s not just, one size or firm or what have you.”
Jordan W. Smith
“It does seem pretty insidious. And again, I think it does come from, in some cases it might come from, in some cases, it might come from a good place where a client feels that they really need to control it all because they know. But at the end of the day, again, if I’m the client, that’s a huge red flag. And we’re not suggesting, of course, that if that happens, your total baby out with the bath water, you know, maybe that’s something you just communicate and say, look, I need access to other people. I need to be able to have a direct contact to if I have an employment issue or a builder’s lean issue, whatever the issue may be. What about you Ryan? Is there anything coming to mind?”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Well, you know, one of the more difficult conversations that we have with clients from time to time is addressing the elephant in the room and how am I going to billed at the end of the day? And admittedly, those can be sometime difficult, sometimes uncomfortable conversations to have. I think, you know, if a client is shopping for legal services and has that question at the outset, and I think that as you talk about perhaps not knowing the right questions to ask or being reticent to ask certain questions. I think that should be something that new clients should be, you know, should feel empowered to have a firm understanding when they’re looking at new legal counsel. If you feel like that conversation is not open, is uncomfortable, is perhaps leaving you feeling that you have more questions than you started with, I think that’s probably your red flag.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Yeah, a hundred percent. That, you know, how the lawyer bills for their time or their efforts. That is a huge thing as far as how to, you know, what to look for in hiring a new lawyer. To Jordan’s point, I think, it’s a great point that if you only have one contact person, a law firm, and that person. You know, for lack of a better term, hoarding your work, you’re not going to get, again, like we talked about, the support and the service that you’re going to need. On the flip side of that, if every single correspondence that you have with your lawyer, there’s four other lawyers, it’s what we call ‘wolf packing’, and that’s another red flag I think people have to look out for. That goes back to the fee conversation. When you have five lawyers working on every single file, those five lawyers are probably recording time, every time something happens on that file. So that’s, you know, fees get built up from there. Fees are extremely important for clients to think about when they’re looking at hiring lawyers. I think it, is your lawyer not willing to really discuss fees? Are you worried that you’re going to have files ‘wolf packed’ that’s going to ramp up your fees? Just little things like that, I would say for me, I don’t want my clients to call me every time they think about something. I don’t want them to worry about getting a bill in the mail for every five, ten minute phone call that we have. And so for, usually if it’s just something small, a bill’s not going out for that, where, yeah, if you’re having an initial conversation with a lawyer to see if you’re willing to hire them and you get a bill for that. Sure. Which I have heard of happening. Yeah, that’s a red flag. You’re probably going to get a bill from every conversation that you have with that lawyer. So those are things where, fees, like you said Ryan, is an elephant in the room that need to be discussed up front. Other red flags?”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Yeah, I think it’s unfortunately challenging for clients who do not have a long history in acquiring legal services. Like, again, you talk about starting a business. I think a lot of times, in situations like that, it’ll default through. You know, I know somebody that knows somebody and that’s the person that they go with. There really isn’t an active process whereby they’re evaluating different options. It’s kind of they default there. So, it’s unfortunate in a sense. You know, sometimes it takes bad experiences for clients to get the perspective that they need in order to properly evaluate, compare, and contrast. You know, different law firms of course, we like, you know, we like to have as many touch points as we possibly can with a particular client. And sometimes for one reason or another, maybe that relationship dissolves or breaks apart. I guess the silver lining could be, if that client does then take the opportunity to go and procure legal services elsewhere, it can give you an opportunity. It gives that client the perspective that they need and perhaps, looking back, at the relationship they had with you, maybe, having looked at it, have a little bit more context, you can kind of see. You can compare and contrast legal services and it’s just, I think once you have that perspective and you can’t get that on the front end, you have to get that on the back end and it takes time. But I think that’s when you know, fit becomes easier, you find places that are a better long term fit for you.”
Jordan W. Smith
“I just want to jump in quick. One of the things I want to say about this too, is sort of red flag is, you know, law firms ought to have some distribution of talent. The spectrum. So if you look at a firm and you see, I don’t like, I’m going to use the word, I don’t like to use the word ‘bench strength’, but the point is you want to be able to see that there’s people all the way through. Right? Are they retaining students? Are they, what do you know? Do you see layers to it? I mean in terms of the succession, and I kind of mentioned earlier what you’re looking for in a lawyer is, you are looking for the opportunity for succession because you’d hope, and we have lots of clients that have family businesses, you know, there’s other clients that are public companies, whatever, it depends. Obviously, on the nature of the business but particularly for family business clients, I think it is so important because you’re building something. Maybe you have kids in the business or the family and you’re looking for the second generation. You should look around and think okay, look at this and go, who’s coming up, who’s around, and what’s going on here. So to me, I think, as a client, I would look at that as a very important point. And if your lawyer is five years or three years to retirement, and there’s really nothing underneath…..”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Right. It’s been a problem. Now, to be clear, like you’re not advocating for what Graeme was talking about before, like ‘wolf packing’ a file, but I think it is important to marry the particular client with somebody of a similar age and vintage as counsel. I mean that of course just makes sense. Similar stages of your life, similar life experience and when you’re talking about businesses that are in periods of transition, the successor of that business is going to want to ensure that the person they will have a relationship with has as much runway as they do in terms of as far as their career will go. If you have soft of disjointed that then that can maybe lead to more turnover.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Yeah, and I think, jumping off both those points, it adds to what we were talking about before where one of the things you have to look out for when you’re hiring a lawyer is the right person on the job for each file. And that goes not only to the example I gave where, I’m not doing complicated reorg files. Also it goes to seniority too. The 30 year partner doesn’t need to be doing every single deal, both big transactions and small transactions. Those little transactions should be delegated down to junior lawyers so that it’s a cost savings measure to the client. So, they’re not getting a 30 year lawyer’s rate on file that a second year associate could do. So, a hundred percent that’s another thing. And again, going back to those red flags that we were talking about before. Another one that I was going to add is – is your lawyer coming up with solutions? And this is something that we talk about a lot, and this goes back to not all lawyers are the same. You know, my Contracts Law Prof, should out to Rob Illing, my first year of law school, had this great saying that I now say all the time is that lawyers have this bad reputation that you will go to a lawyer with one problem and you walk away with five. And what that means is that we’re trained to spot issues, we’re trained to find the legal issues in any kind of dispute. Find any issues with a contract that we’re reviewing, catch any red flags that are going to make a deal go sideways. But the other thing that a lot of lawyers forget is that the next step is that we’re also supposed to provide solutions to those issues. We’re supposed to tell the client, here are the issues that we’ve spotted, but also here are the important ones. Here are the ones that really matter. Here are the ones that we kind of ignore, not ignore but just not deal with as much because they’re just not as big of a deal. And also here are the ones that we’re going to deal with and here are how we’re going to deal with them. And here’s how we’re going to get from A to B. And we’re going to get your deal closed. We’re going to get this acquisition done for you. We’re going to get this reorganization done. We’re going to get you to the finish line. So, many lawyers out there, and we have heard horror stories, they start here and they just say, here are all the issues I’ve spotted with this. What do you want me to do about it? And they don’t go that extra step of providing that advice, providing that counsel. What we talk about so often here, and again, it goes back to we’re in a service industry, we’re providing legal services. A lot of lawyer think they’re being paid because they went to school for years or what have you. That is a huge red flag if your lawyer is constantly just spotting issues. If they’re simply order takers.”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Mm-hmm. Instruction takers, they’re not providing any kind of advice. They’re simply saying, here are all the issues I see, give me some instructions. What do you want me to do about this? Cause again, what are you really paying for there? Well, I mean, I guess, you know, that’s certainly not the approach that we, like the three of us sitting around this table would advocate for. But I, again, I can’t help but think you can’t report to be all things to all people and maybe some clients that’s the type of role that they envisaged for counsel and still be. But again, it’s one of those things. If that’s the type of client that we’re running into, then it, maybe it’s a situation where we’re just not going to be a good fit. Right, and again, you’ll go through a couple repetitions and you’ll realize that, what they expect out of us and what we view our as our appropriate role in the transaction.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Yeah, that’s great. A hundred percent, that’s where we talked about before as a law firm, the way we view this, knowing that you’re not going to be everything to everyone. That’s why you get a lot from hiring a diverse group of people. The three of us sitting around the table are, uh, cut from the same cloth a bit. But that is very important for us, that the other people around the walls here are very different than us, so that’s why, again, we have some very different personalities around here. The idea is that we want a diverse group of clients and a diverse group of personalities as far as, clientele goes. So that’s another thing to look out for, is everyone the same on the law firm’s website? Does everyone look like a bit of a carbon copy of one another? And again, I know it’s rich for me to say, sitting around with another couple of middle aged white guys. That’s a huge thing I think that we pride ourselves on, you know, every law firm should be aiming to have a diverse group of lawyers.”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Yeah. I feel like we should, every time I say fit, drink, but I say it again. So I think to your point, fit can be both personal and firm level, right? Like there’s certain, obviously overarching principles that every firm has, right? And those principles can inform what the relationship with you, what the fit might be. But. I think what you’re talking about, beyond that, there’s another layer talking about on an individualized basis. And if your hiring practices are such that you want a good cross section that will help, again, that helps put the puzzle, and helps the fit, help it to match an individual lawyer with a particular client better than you might otherwise would be.”
Jordan W. Smith
“Yeah. So one of the things I wanted to say here is not to put too much pressure on clients when they want to make a decision. It is an enormous, enormous amount of work to change your professional service providers once you get going. Like it is, I mean, I don’t know a lot about a lot of people, but for me, I mean, how man times do I change, you know, an insurance provider, have home insurance here, or a car insurance, whatever, and a busy life happens. And that’s not even really, it’s not relational almost. I don’t have that type of relationship, but it’s just one other thing to deal with. Well, that’s nothing compared to obvious. This, at least in the case of really active, ongoing businesses, we’re not talking about a registered office. That’s a whole company, all around. But obviously for active business clients, once you get into it, you know, your law firm hopefully should have proper records. Know the history, you know the ingredients on file, what they’ve done, the whole thing to move that it’s an enormous amount of work. It speaks to when active businesses do move, how unhappy they have to be to move. Yeah, like it takes a lot to move. I mean, I’ve had the same accountant for a long time. I know lots of other great accountants. I’m not, you know, if Don is listening. I’m very happy with you, Don, but the point is that, it’s one of those things where it’s a lot of work. Again, it’s getting off on the right foot right from the get go, taking that little bit of, to really get to address these red flags, consider them. Think about who you’re talking to, both the firm, the particular lawyer, that might be the point of contact, knowing even if you were starting a business that down the road, you really want to try to make that right first decision. And again, if you’re a business that’s already kind of into it, I guess the reality is you look at the sunk cost versus the benefit of moving. You have to make that assessment.”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Of course it happens that businesses do move counsel. I see this all the time too, you know, those relationships are hard or inconvenient to disrupt. But when I have seen is I think that clients that have perhaps held their nose, clenched their teeth, taken service that may not be of the highest level, just to avoid having to go through that discomfort and unfamiliarity of changing that relationship. But I would say to clients that, over the long term, it’s not worth, at least in my view, to continue to accept less than appropriate service just because of you’re wanting to avoid the inconvenience or going through the steps of forging the new relationship.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Yeah. And I think that goes back to kind of some advice you were talking about earlier, Ryan, in that don’t limit yourself to one law firm. Especially starting out when you’re trying to find that right fit, take a drink, because that’s the good thing about the legal industry. There are no exclusive representation agreements, in our world. We can’t do that. Every file is in and of itself the client can move that file to any law firm that they want to at any given time. So yeah, we do, encourage people to go use another lawyer on a file every once in a while because, frankly, we’re not afraid of a little competition. And it shows the clients sometimes how good they have it. So, yeah, for clients a hundred percent, take advantage of that. Go out and use a few different lawyer. Sample a little bit. Try and establish that relationship with someone where it works and they get what you’re trying to do. You understand what they’re saying. You know there’s a lot of lawyers out there. Like we’ve talked about over and over again, every lawyer’s not going to work for every clients, so, a hundred percent, go have a sample. Use as many lawyers as you want to because I think that’s the best way to find the one that’s going to work for you. So, I want to hear from Jordan because Jordan is the only person around this table that kind of has experience with hiring a lawyer. Cause you’ve run a private business for a few years there. So, tell us some of your horror stories. What are some of the things that happened to you when you were out trying to hire legal representation and what would you say to look out for?”
Jordan W. Smith
“Yeah, well, the first thing I’ll say that’s a whole other conversation, I guess, it’s really hard running a business. So, the first thing I’ll say is probably a benefit every lawyer, but for me, kind of trying to run, I guess running a business for almost two years, you realize how difficult it is and how much pressure there is to do that – employment relationship that you have to navigate, the emails or phone calls on problem jobs at whatever hours. There’s just a lot going on. So, what I would say to you is, and really it’s a theme of a lot of this, to go back to the relationship aspect, I mean, in that case I had pretty good relationship with a number of lawyers, given that I was a lawyer that helped on the accounting side, I can say that, I ended up actually changing accountants. I mean, so obviously we’re talking about legal services, but if we’re going to the umbrella of professional services, and a lot of this is germane to.. I realized and I started looking at it, that we were getting billed a lot, we’re not getting very much, that our processes weren’t great even internally. So, I realized part of it, again, on the client side, I realized that there’s a better mouse trap. You know, we need to be able to communicate better to our professional advisors, we need to be able to manage expectations, including fees, obviously you have to manage the output a little bit and what you’re asking for assistance. So for me, when I look at it all, I would say on the theme of everything we’ve talked about is you need to have someone who knows the business, knows your business. You need to have somebody who cares about you. In the case, when you know when I was running a business, I found that we had a long history, for example, with an accounting firm but we didn’t have a relationship with that firm really. Well, we had a transactional relationship. It was a monetary relationship where we paid again, quite a bit for, I mind you , probably not getting very much, but we certainly didn’t have an ability to discuss. matters in a personal way. And they didn’t really have a grasp, I think on, our business of what we needed to accomplish.”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Yeah, what an invaluable perspective that must be because I mean, you’re absolutely right, like Graeme and I have never gone through the process of having to select external legal counsel and, you know, put myself in those shoes. Of the, of the new fresh client. That’s again trying to make a match.”
Jordan W. Smith
“Um, I’ll interrupt you, but I mean at the end of the day, there’s no magic really to it. I guess. I mean, when you think about it, if you’re running a business you want, you know, solutions and Graeme, you mentioned it for before, you want solutions. So, if you phone and all you get is we can’t do this, you can’t do that. This didn’t, this isn’t right and that’s not right. Well, okay, thanks, bye. And so, really at the end of the day, that’s the other thing that I really saw. So for example, if you just terminated an employee and you thought you did it with cause and perhaps you didn’t, whatever the issue is, you don’t want someone telling you well, you know, you did it wrong. It’s like okay, well thanks. That horse is out of the barn, right? You want someone to, maybe, there’s a constructive element of hey, you know, let’s mitigate the risk next time we do this, that, and the other. But you just, you want the bleeding to stop, you want someone you can phone that’s going to care. It’s responsive. Everything we’ve said, it’s going to help you solve your problem. That’s where you are.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Love it. So yeah, I think that’s all I have to summarize our advice when you’re a client looking to hire a lawyer, I’ll do my summary first. You guys can fill in after me. It’s a relationship based thing. Go out and find someone that actually enjoys spending time with and who is going to understand you and your business. Cause those are two different things. Again, don’t try, don’t be afraid of sampling different lawyers. Go out here and find the right fit, because that’s huge. Talk about fees upfront. Ask how they’re going to bill you, how that will go. Ask what lawyers are going to be working on your files. Again, just get information at the outset is the biggest thing that clients need. And then from there, it’s about finding your fit. That’s all I got.”
Jordan W. Smith
“I thought you gave a pretty good summary. I’m going to drink to that. All right, pretty good summary. I don’t have anything to add, okay.”
Ryan C. Kemp
“I’m good.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Well, thanks again everyone for tuning in to the SMP Legal Podcast.”
