NEWS The value of an attorney and when to speak to one
Lawyers, attorneys, shysters, sharks, over-paid bottom-feeders.
These are some of the terms used to describe the profession of law — a profession that takes four years of college and three years of law school before one can even sit to take the test to practice.
The job of a lawyer is to champion the client’s rights and tell them when they are barking up the wrong tree. As a lawyer, frequently our job is to deliver bad news. The reason for that is quite simple: The world does not play fair. Bad things happen, people make bad deals and someone gets hurt.
The lawyer is actually the clean-up guy, like the song says, “ … and the lawyer has to clean up all the messes.” This costs money because a lawyer has only one product — his or her knowledge and it is doled out in increments of time.
Knowledge is expensive to acquire. A lawyer has spent a great deal of their life getting to the place where they can answer a client’s question with an answer that is true and reliable.
So what is the value of an attorney? That is determined by several factors, not the least of which is whether the attorney is doing planning for you, or cleaning up a mess.
In the law, as in most of life, the saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” is famously true. As a business lawyer, I frequently have clients come to me, after they have signed the contract.
Let me give an example: I have a client who calls me up and says, “David, I leased a new car but the dealer won’t pay off the prior lease completely. What do I do?”
Now, depending on the car dealer, I might or might not be able to unwind the deal and get my client out of the lease. But in looking over the lease, I see that it calls for only 12,000 miles a year to be allowed. Afterwards he is charged 30 cents per mile.
One of the easiest things to get is the dealer to kick up the mileage allowance to 15,000 miles. This is a $900 per year savings, which over the course of a four-year lease is $3,600.
My client didn’t call me beforehand because he didn’t want to pay an attorney’s bill of some nominal amount — under $500 — for a few phone calls and perhaps a meeting with dealer. Instead he is going to have pay $3,600 if he drives 15,000 miles a year for the next four years, which in Los Angeles is not that difficult to do.
So what’s the value of an attorney? Five hundred dollars on the front end with a phone call, saves $3,600 on the back end. That’s a 700 percent rate of return — not a bad day’s savings. They might be expensive to call, but they can save thousands of dollars on the front end of a deal.
On the other hand, to unwind a deal, if possible, may cost several thousands more and you will have had to go through the turmoil of a lawsuit to get there.
Lawyers, attorneys, shysters, sharks, over-paid bottom-feeders.
Champions, saviors, knights-in-dented-armor — it all depends on your perspective and that depends on when you call them. (David Pisarra is a partner in the Santa Monica law firm of Pisarra & Grist. He 310-664- 9969 or by e-mail at )
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 12, 2003. Read the original PDF.