About This Blog and My Approach to Lawyering
This blog is intended to provide information sufficiently detailed to be useful while remaining accessible to intelligent businessmen and women who may not be lawyers, but still find they need to make decisions affected by legal issues. It is of course not intended to take the place of consultation with me or any other attorney, but rather to make those encounters more meaningful and productive.
When I first meet with clients, I tell them that I am not a lawyer who will simply tell them what to do nor am I a lawyer who will simply do whatever you tell me to do. To me, both of these approaches overlook the dynamic relationship every lawyer and client should have with one another.
I try not to make decisions for my clients because they - not I - are the ones who ultimately have to live with the consequences of the decision. No matter how good a lawyer I am or how well a client does in acquainting me with the problem or concern to be addressed, there are some intangible things I can never know or understand that may nevertheless be important to the decision to be made. So my job is to do the best I can to explain the available options and consequences so that clients really can make legally informed business decisions.
On the other side of the coin, I believe it is important to listen carefully to what a client asks me to do because sometimes what a client asks is really not what they want at all or maybe not the best option. Sometimes you only think you want cake because you didn’t know ice cream was available. Here my job is to ask enough questions to determine what the key issue or concern in fact is and tailor my advice and counsel accordingly.
This blog is an extension of this philosphy. My goal is to write about concerns and matters clients have asked about over the years, as well as about other issues that interest me which I believe may also be helpful to those in various businesses. In this way I hope to contribute meaningfully to the inventory of information those in business have when faced with crucial business or personal decisions containing a legal component.
In addition, I am writing this blog because I like to write and always have. I find I understand concepts better when I write about them and so perhaps this blog will make me a better lawyer as a result. And finally, the fact I’ve gotten compliments - even from strangers - over the years about the quality of my writing is certainly an encouragement.
It should go without saying that nothing I write should be construed as legal advice or opinion to be followed without further consultation with an attorney. The blog is not an offer to represent you nor is it intended to form an attorney-client relationship. Necessarily I write in a vacuum of specific facts about particular circumstances and my own legal counsel and advice in a particular situation might differ from the general principles I set out here. It is in the end just my general thoughts on the topics covered.
When I first meet with clients, I tell them that I am not a lawyer who will simply tell them what to do nor am I a lawyer who will simply do whatever you tell me to do. To me, both of these approaches overlook the dynamic relationship every lawyer and client should have with one another.
I try not to make decisions for my clients because they - not I - are the ones who ultimately have to live with the consequences of the decision. No matter how good a lawyer I am or how well a client does in acquainting me with the problem or concern to be addressed, there are some intangible things I can never know or understand that may nevertheless be important to the decision to be made. So my job is to do the best I can to explain the available options and consequences so that clients really can make legally informed business decisions.
On the other side of the coin, I believe it is important to listen carefully to what a client asks me to do because sometimes what a client asks is really not what they want at all or maybe not the best option. Sometimes you only think you want cake because you didn’t know ice cream was available. Here my job is to ask enough questions to determine what the key issue or concern in fact is and tailor my advice and counsel accordingly.
This blog is an extension of this philosphy. My goal is to write about concerns and matters clients have asked about over the years, as well as about other issues that interest me which I believe may also be helpful to those in various businesses. In this way I hope to contribute meaningfully to the inventory of information those in business have when faced with crucial business or personal decisions containing a legal component.
In addition, I am writing this blog because I like to write and always have. I find I understand concepts better when I write about them and so perhaps this blog will make me a better lawyer as a result. And finally, the fact I’ve gotten compliments - even from strangers - over the years about the quality of my writing is certainly an encouragement.
It should go without saying that nothing I write should be construed as legal advice or opinion to be followed without further consultation with an attorney. The blog is not an offer to represent you nor is it intended to form an attorney-client relationship. Necessarily I write in a vacuum of specific facts about particular circumstances and my own legal counsel and advice in a particular situation might differ from the general principles I set out here. It is in the end just my general thoughts on the topics covered.
