How to get your money’s worth from your startup lawyer

123 点作者 samaysharma超过 6 年前

8 条评论

When I first started our company I met a "startup" lawyer at a meetup event and after a few meetings hired him. He was fine, but was expensive and didn't know much about high scale tech startups - mostly govt contract startups. So we fired him and hired Cooley.Cooley had great parties and networking events. When our lead investor came in and asked for multiple preferences (no go) I asked the assigned counsel what they thought and the response was: "Hey this is your first money so it doesn't really matter." At the time this was my first deal, but I had read a TON on this issue and it was clear that this was a hard predatory ask for a deal like ours.I asked some of my other friends and they suggested a different lawyer, whom I called and he said "Tell them to eat shit and call me when they call back with a new term sheet." Cooley was immediately fired and we hired the new guy who has tons of experience in our space and has been the absolute best.Moral of the story is, be informed enough so you can call bullshit, but it's really important to find counsel that 1. you can trust and 2. is experienced in your particular types of deals so that when you are out of your depth you know they will be the best counsel.At the end of the day you're CEO so the buck stops with you. Your lawyers are counsel not operations, so act accordingly.

评论 #18882660 未加载

评论 #18882302 未加载

评论 #18881200 未加载

gumby超过 6 年前

A few points:- The partner matters a lot more than the firm. For example I used Cooley, but really it was one attorney I wanted. When he moved to another firm my company went with him.- Of course it's the associates, not the partner who will do 99% of the work -- but that's all you need anyway. The partner however supervises. Ideally you never get a bill for the partner's time.- In almost any case you should hardly use your lawyers at all in the first year or two. You get standard NDAs (one way and/or mutual) and can fill them in yourself. If you get one from a partner, ask to use yours or read theirs and if it looks really close just use it (unless its some massive one from, say, Intel -- but really, are you going to be able to negotiate that?). Likewise just use standard job offers and confidentiality/assignment forms. No need to pay a lawyer for those once get up. But don't wing it with anything security or debt related!- Another reason not to care about the firm: a big firm will have lots of services but will you need them? For example for patent filing you may want a boutique firm that specializes in just your area. For HR lawsuits I'd use MoFo even if I don't use them for corporate law.- Make sure your firm understands startups (this expands on what the article said about "Hire lawyers who have experience with the particular task you are asking them to perform"). Various big firms have opened offices in the Valley in order to get that sweet deal flow. But unless they staff up with some local attorneys with local connections and experience you're not going to get a lawyer who can help you no matter how good they are. Even the startup scenes in NY and Boston are different from each other and from the Valley or SF. Not just network but how people do things.- an exception to the "firm doesn't matter" rule: Wilson -- not only have I only had bad lawyer experiences (mainly huge Billings) when I was involved with a company that used Wilson, but the only firm that ever asked me to do something illegal (they were representing our investor...but only for that transaction as our lawyer was also the investor's lawyer. For subsequent rounds the investor used someone else, as they were also disgusted with Wilson). There's a reason this onetime "star startup law firm" has been shrinking.

评论 #18884792 未加载

zekevermillion超过 6 年前

The article supports a common fallacy that clients just have to understand enough to police their service-providers. I would suggest that if you consider yourself to be a startup founder, you should know MORE THAN your lawyer about your particular transaction. If you do NOT know more than your lawyer, you should consume all available info until you do, or else bring in an advisor (such as a professional seed investor who is not a stakeholder in your company) to help you. Your lawyer can give you advice only, but you have to take charge of your own direction and decision-making. Your lawyer can and should also perform the service of organizing all the paperwork, which is surprisingly time-consuming yet not very edifying.

评论 #18880785 未加载

评论 #18881145 未加载

评论 #18880961 未加载

jacquesm超过 6 年前

Can't go wrong with Grellas.<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=grellas" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=grellas</a>

m0zg超过 6 年前

Also: rather than immediately going to UpCounsel or LawTrades, try finding a local lawyer through e.g. Avvo. For me this resulted in a lower hourly bill rate. You can compare all three (though if you contacted your lawyer through UpCounsel or LT first, they won't work with you direct). It seems to me that lawyers simply bake the third party fees into their rate, so you might as well skip the middleman.

评论 #18880898 未加载

skrebbel超过 6 年前

> Finally, make sure you understand in advance what costs and expenses the firm will pass on to you (e.g. photocopying, postage, couriers, travel)(emphasis mine)Is there something particular about the US legal system that forces these people to live in the stone age? I mean, photocopies?

评论 #18881499 未加载

评论 #18882602 未加载

relaunched超过 6 年前

There are many startup related firms that have deferred fees or will give a good amount of advice for free. When you are really small, that's makes sure you don't mess up things that affect equity. The whole board member / investors to startup lawyer relationship is something founders have to be cognizant of...I could write for days about how perverse incentives work against the startup / founders.However, there are tons of issues beyond just startup equity / corp governance / incorporating that can kill your company. Discrimination / ERISA (HR issues broadly), privacy, anti-bribery, IP, commercial contracts...the list goes on and on.Most young founders don't even know what they don't know and silicon valley culture tends to err on the side of, "just get the the exit...that's bigCo stuff you don't need to get lawyers involved, just do this."If you truly want to build a great company, hire a well rounded lawyer as an FTE much earlier than you think. They don't need to be a first 10 hire. However, if you are growing and want to build a high-quality company, you should think about hiring a well rounded lawyer somewhere between hire 25-50.

dctoedt超过 6 年前

I'm going to add this link (and a link to this HN discussion) to the "Startup Law 101" page that I've been maintaining [0] in lieu of providing copies of the slides I use in guest-lecturing on the subject.[0] <a href="https://www.oncontracts.com/startup-law/" rel="nofollow">https://www.oncontracts.com/startup-law/</a>