Research Saves Money & Unlocks your Attorney

Ten years ago, when people would go to the doctor they would be forced to have complete confidence in what he was saying, that he was diagnosing correctly and prescribing the right combination of drugs,  but those days are over. People are more educated now, they look up their symptoms online, look up what drugs they shouldn’t take in combination with other drugs and they are able to ask their doctor more educated questions; they don’t just nod and say, “Yes, Doctor, I will do whatever you say. Here’s my spleen.”

Then why should you do that when you talk with your lawyer? Now, I am not saying that you shouldn’t take the advice of your doctor or lawyer. That would be stupid. But it would be equally stupid to call up your lawyer having no idea what he was talking about, or miss something important you need to know when you have free resources like IRS.gov, FindLaw and Google Scholar.  That’s right…free!

FindLaw, for instance, has some great FREE resources for people that don’t know how to research law, but still need help narrowing down some questions. For the more advanced search, if you took some law in high school or college and think you can find your way around, they also have court cases, U.S code and some state code, buteven if you don’t know how to look up codes or cases they have a large collection of invaluable articles written by top law firms in the professional area of the site.

So now you have the resources…great. Now what do you do? Well let’s say that you want to finally go after the American Dream and start a business of your own. Most people think, “I’ll just go online to the Secretary of State’s website and file for a sole-proprietorship or corporation and get started selling thing-a-ma-jigs.” Well, that might work if you are going to be selling afghans (the blankets, not the people) and doilies to your the rest of the folks at the senior center – that is, if you paid your sales tax, etc. But if you happened to buy pesticide laced yarn from China and it killed Fluffy, Mr. Goldworthy’s pure-bred cat  (I know it’s a stretch), you might be facing a lawsuit. If you filed for a sole-proprietorship then you could be in the hole quite a bit of bingo money due to unlimited liability – where the business’s debts and legal problems are your personal ball and chain. To avoid that, use your resources. For instance: FindLaw’s “Starting a Business” linked from their home page. You would learn about many aspects of starting a business legally. Now here’s the rule: Research done before talking with your lawyer can (if you get info from the right places) save your lawyer time trying to teach you what to do, therefore saving you money. By the way, if you didn’t know already, lawyers work by the hour. So every minute you spend researching on your own saves you money by saving your lawyer time.

To drive home the point, let’s say that you work for $25/hr, or even $50/hr. That means that if you spent two hours researching some business laws and lingo it would be equivalent to a $100 loss in the short run (hopefully it will pay off in your business later on). Now if your lawyer had to spend half that time (an hour) teaching you the same stuff, you would lose $200-$300+. That is a difference of more than $100-$200! Plus, if you learn it yourself, chances are you’ll retain it better and you’ll be able to converse on nearly the same level as your lawyer. He’ll still know more, but you’ll understand what he’s talking about. If you did your research right, you could present him with your situation and possible solution and he might even agree with you! He might not even charge you for it either.

For further proof, let’s say that you are starting your business at home. Talking with your lawyer, he/she forgets to tell you about your insurance needs; what is covered under home owner’s insurance and what is not. Through unfortunate events, the cable guy working on your house cuts into some electrical lines by accident and starts your house ablaze. You end up loosing over $3000 in inventory. Or, you get burgled and they steal your inventory. Your home insurer says they don’t cover business losses. Now, they might not say that if you’re lucky, but had you done some research, you could have asked your attorney about your insurance needs and saved a $3000 permanent loss and the cost of having to replace the inventory.

So, lesson learned: don’t be a dumb sheep when talking to your lawyer. Do some research yourself, and still get the right legal advice at a fraction of the cost. Remember, lawyers are tools. You need to know how to use them just like any other tool.

Helpful links on how to do legal research:

http://library.lawschool.cornell.edu/WhatWeDo/ResearchGuides/Basics.cfm

http://www.nolo.com/legal-research/