Need a Lawyer? A Route to Free Legal Advice

Subject: Need a Lawyer? A Route to Free Legal Advice Fri Aug 20, 2010 9:54 pm

There's no way around it. As an entrepreneur, you'll (at some point) need the services of an attorney—whether it's to fend off a lawsuit or to avoid a legal mess in the first place. In fact, if you don't have access to an attorney, you could lose a ton of money—or even your business.

I can hear you protesting loudly now, "Are you crazy, Mike? I can't afford a lawyer!" Well, actually you can—and at the risk of sounding like your mother—you can't really afford not to have an attorney. And in fact, you can get legal advice for far less than the normal $350 an hour (or more) billing rate. You can get it for free.

Yes, you can get top tier-legal advice and the legal documents every small-business owner needs for free. How? Here's my secret:

Go to a local college or university and talk to the head of the legal department. Volunteer your business to be a case study for a business law class. The class, under the direction of the professor, who is almost always an attorney, can create partner agreements, employment contracts, sales agreements, NDAs, all the legal mumbo-jumbo that's required on websites (such as disclaimers) and lots more—essentially all the legal documents a business owner will ever need. In times of crisis (think lawsuit), they may even provide free consultation, too.

Having a business law class prepare custom legal documents for you is so much better than downloading the cookie-cutter legal docs found all over the web, which can be outdated or incomplete. And you don't have to worry about inexperienced students doing your legal work; the professor will be supervising the projects.

This is one of those rare "everybody wins" situations. The professors are happy to take on your work since they prefer to have their students tackle real-life situations instead of boring textbook hypotheticals. The students are eager to participate because they get to put "real-world" legal experience on their resumes. And you – well, of course you're thrilled since you get thousands of dollars of legal work for nothing. (Consider occasionally treating the class to pizza or Starbucks as a thank you.)

Sounds pretty good—but wait, there's more...

Here: ANCAPS: ANARCHO-CAPITALISTS

Need a Lawyer? A Route to Free Legal Advice

Need a Lawyer? A Route to Free Legal Advice

Anarcho-Capitalist Categorical Imperatives

Via AnCaps: Law & Enforced Unnatural Order