legal, low-capital, ltd, lawyerI have recently set up a small company focused on web application development with a pretty limited budget. I was wondering what the best practices are for dealing with legal stuff.
where to look for a cheap lawyer with good quality to price ratio
Legal directories, like The Legal 500 or Chambers and Partners, are a good place to find quality lawyers. I suggest you look at smaller, regional firms.
However, good lawyers (and certainly those who are well-rated in the directories) generally know their value and will charge accordingly. That said, people tend to be quite loyal to their professional advisers: if you can convince one that you’re going places and will bring them lots of business in the future, they might be willing to work for a reduced rate during your startup years.
Many organisations offer a degree of free legal advice to their customers: some business bank accounts come with some level of access to a lawyer; as does membership of many professional societies or other industry groups.
Some lawyers provide less costly (or even pro bono) clinics from time to time—either through their own firm, or through charities devoted to the purpose—but rarely does that happen for commercial subjects: it tends to be more typical for areas relevant to individuals, like family or immigration law.
You may find that someone who has some legal education (but who is not qualified) would be interested in helping out for low cost in order to build their own experience. However, unless they advise you through an organisation set up for the purpose, they probably won’t be covered by any insurance against providing faulty advice: that is a significant risk, both for you (they won’t be able to remedy your loss) and for them (they could lose everything).
And there is, of course, a wealth of information on the Internet.
what to look for when picking one
A person who’s genuinely interested in you/your business and has relevant experience working on similar projects.
where to look for a cheap lawyer with good quality to price ratio
I work for a company here in London called Lexoo who connects startups with lawyers in the UK.
On our website you can submit details of the legal work you need completing, and we will then gather quotes from a number of hand-picked solicitors (who often trained at the largest firms, but for lifestyle reasons have now started out on their own, or joined a smaller firm, and thus have lower overheads).
After that, you can easily compare the quotes side by side, as well as each solicitor's experience (e.g. which other startups have they worked for?).
What legal advice is necessary is slightly complicated; it depends on a few factors:
In terms of where to look cheap lawyers: If you are writing your own contracts etc. but want a legal look lots of universities (at least in Canada) have legal clinics or legal practicums where students look at stuff. Cheap but very limited experience but very fresh schooling. Another option is many business courses (at least in Canada) from community colleges and universities include a module on writing legal documents and often help you develop one specific one which they then review so you can get feedback on your writing and general legal writing instruction.
Quality to price ratio is not always sensible. I’d suggest the main thing to look for is a feeling of trustworthyness but that is often foolable.
I’d say legal advice is absolutely necessary unless you have high legal knowledge/experience for at least:
The real question is not to find an affordable lawyer, but to know what the lawyer should or should not work on which will help you keep budgets down. Many low cost lawyers do not provide customized service for your specific needs and work on all types of companies for their basic filing and formation docs. You can save by using templates for basic stuff such as formation the corporation, by laws, issuing stock, etc. especially if you are the only employee.
If you are making a web app the is free to use, then you can write the privacy policy and terms and conditions on your own using templates available from other sites and this is a service that affordable lawyers could charge a few thousand dollar for.
If you are going to have a customer pay you, then you may want to have a lawyer review the service agreement or sales agreement to make sure it is appropriate. You need to make it very clear what you are agreeing to provide and what happens if your service goes down.
The best advice is to fully think out your business model and talk to a lawyer that specializes in that area to ask them if they would be able to work on your case and what they would charge. They usually will give you 30 min to discuss basic issues and provide you with an estimate of the costs. Good lawyers will make it clear if they have concerns with any part of your business model and will work on those specific docs. For anything that is generic use a template from one of the online sources for your country. The laws are country specific so its hard to recommend one place.
An alternative place to find a lawyer could be in bartering / swapping / virtual currency websites.
You should find experienced lawyers who love these kind of websites. However I believe you will mainly find young people who still don’t have much money and they want a website for them.
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