General Rant about Lawyers

[FA-18C]

If lawyers read, apologize if I offend here, but am specifically referring to the clown show we are part of with the process of selling our small company. The Buyers used a large firm who are "experts" - the result has been a Purchase Agreement 2 x the size of one used for a $250M sale I have insight to. The lack of organization, and continued editing of Buyer and Seller agreed to documents, so editing just to edit, is staggering. The bank's legal weighing in at the end with a list of documents they want and AFTER signing all of the documents demanding changes to an agreed upon deal, and essentially wanting to have an open ended timeline to effect payment is maddening. I am at a complete loss of words. We are held hostage by an arrogant property attorney who's emails are don't have, can't do, unable...instead of just saying get us this and we send the $$s. The net effect is they are racking up hourly fees - unprofessional at a minimum.

The legal team of the buyer and the bank have completely sucked the good feeling and joy behind this professional milestone. While I think we have a basis for breach to terminate, our bowels are liquid just thinking of having to go through this again.

Just venting. The Buyer's wife is a lawyer made the comment: "there are a lot of crappy lawyers...", my response was "why did you have to hire all of them."

[wdfifteen]

I don't think you have to take your lawyer's advice. The buyers are paying their lawyers to drag it out for a reason. The buyers have every right to say, "knock it off and get this done," if they want to.

[Flatbutt1]

and yet we've made them necessary to so many aspects of modern life.

[Zeke]

I'm tied up with details just trying to sell a car. I can't imagine selling the house and what that entails. A business? I feel for you. No one would want to buy a business from me. I have a short fuse. One and done or "next."

[Bill Douglas]

You could say "The business is still on the market until, etc etc. " that may stop them playing silly games.

[1990C4S]

Are you legally bound to close the deal? One option is to stop responding and say you have another interested buyer.

The other one is to use your lawyer to shut them down. As my layer says 'No, is a very powerful word'.

[Chocaholic]

Lawyers, like consultants, are adept at maximizing billable hours. It's what they do, and they do it well...in general.

[MikeSid]

I'm handing a $60M sale for a client right now. The Purchase Agreement (without schedules and exhibits) is a bit over 70 pages. About 40 percent of that is boilerplate - which means a large portion is fairly substantive and deal specific. Once disclosure schedules and exhibits are added, it may end up around 200 pages.

On the other hand, I had a sale of a $400K company earlier this fall. Total agreement might have topped 25 pages.

I would consider both of those examples to be typical and appropriate. But a sale of a $400K company with a 300 page agreement is unheard of and indicative of the buyside getting screwed.

I've generally found that big buyside firms don't know how to do less and tend to milk the ever loving shirt out of their clients. Sometimes the size of the deal justifies that level of attention. When it doesn't, the buyside absolutely shouldn't be with a nationwide firm.

[SpyderMike]

and no real warranty on their work...

I have a long time friend - Harvard lawyer blah blah blah, and he maintains one of the problems with this country is too many lawyers. The per capita number is around 1 attorney for every 248 citizens. Does that seem right? What do they find themselves busy with, oh yea, arguing against each other while their clients pay. Fun.

I guess I got triggered...

[Superman]

I am married to an attorney but this is not the kind of law she does. Last Friday she won a big court case. Not a split decision. She won the whole thing. Protecting an industry against manipulation.

For part of my career I negotiated labor agreements and resolved labor disputes. No attorneys in the room, usually. I have a STRONG preference for having the principals meet and negotiate terms directly with one another. Sometimes their discussions need to be professionally guided, but this model works more effectively and more quickly than having attorneys to the negotiating. By a wide margin. When the issues are settled, then pay the attorneys to write it up. Done.

I have also done plenty of work with people and organizations through their attorneys, and I very often wondered what they were telling their clients. Yes, they want billable hours. Yes, they tell their clients they can kick so-and-so's butt in court. Yes, they almost always lost instead.

Attorneys are needed, but clients need to understand what their role is and isn't. And again, when principals are separate from one another by two teams of opposing counsel, expect an expensive mess.

[Baz]

[Superman]

Can we tell lawyer jokes here? I have a good one.

[Dantilla]

Actually, there are only three real lawyer jokes.

The rest are true stories.

[Alan A]

You are expecting people that get paid by the hour to be motivated to be efficient.
That’s your first mistake…

[fanaudical]

Good attorneys who are efficient, skilled, and knowledgeable certainly bring value to their clients. And then there is the rest of those in the profession...

[red 928]

where you go to visit a "good" lawyer:

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by FA-18C

If lawyers read, apologize if I offend here, but am specifically referring to the clown show we are part of with the process of selling our small company...

This is not advice but... It's your company! I'd tell them the deal is off and wait for a reaction.

[Cairo94507]

It sounds as if they are just chasing billable hours... Sorry you are going through this BS; should have been a fairly straight forward, rewarding experience instead of a gut twister.

[greglepore]

Its gotten worse recently, big firms are feeling the squeeze, and yeah, too many grads - law schools are endowment machines.

[1990C4S]

Someone in my family is a lawyer, and she does work similar to the type described above.

One of the problems (as I see it) in their work is that they obsess over issues that are not going to happen, or exceedingly unlikely to happen, but that is their job.

The lawyer I know just completed a contractual change (to be signed by a dozen people) because one of the many lawyers didn't like the wording on the payment terms, and even though the client had been paid, they still wanted the payment terms modified.

Their logic and training is fundamentally different from that of engineers; building/designing anything based on 'legal logic' would prevent progress. They are different, sometimes that's good, mostly it's not.

But you're still getting screwed.