Why Start-up Lawyers Frustrate Me
I’ve decided to start a series of posts called “Why Xs Frustrate Me.” Today, X = Venture Lawyers. In future posts, X will equal academics, entrepreneurs, accountants, venture capitalists, drummers, the patent ecosystem and other targets of my affection.
Given that I used to be a start-up lawyer and that even today more than half of my friends continue in this profession, what better group to complain about? Besides, I don’t get enough negative emails per day, so this will surely help.
My two main gripes are pricing and execution:
Pricing
As everyone who hires startup lawyers knows, it’s more expensive all the time to get help. $300 hourly rates that were once reserved for partners, are now allocated to junior associates. To put this in perspective, when I started as a venture lawyer in 1998 my starting salary was $71,000. Ten years later first-year attorneys at good firms are starting at $165,000. I was eligible for a 10% bonus back then and have been told the same is true today. So with bonus the spread is $78,100 and $181,500. That is a difference of 132% in ten years! And yes, compensation at all levels in law firms has changed at least this much.
Now, what I find really interesting is to compare this compensation change versus the average amount of money that venture-backed startups raise in their first rounds. According to the latest NVCA yearbook, in 1998, the average company raised $5.1 million in their first round of financing. In 2007, the number was $5.7 million. That is a difference of 11.7% over ten years. Admittedly, in 1999 and 2000 companies were raising two and even four times the 1998 first round amounts, but these numbers quickly fell back into historical averages after the bubble burst.
One more comparison that is interesting: CEO compensation at venture-backed companies. There aren’t consistent professional studies that track the last ten years, so I’ll draw on my own experience, some of which was part of my research for a series on compensation published on AskTheVC.com. in 1998, CEO cash compensation ran was in the $150,000 to $160,000 (median) range while in 2007, the median was $200,000 to $220,000. Even taking the largest spread possible the ten year difference is 46%. I’d also argue that the pool of world-class CEOs has not expanded nearly as much in ten years as the amount of competent venture attorneys.
So these are pretty compelling statistics, right? (If you are like me, you normally fall into the “lies, damned lies and statistics” school of thought). Well maybe, because I don’t see our companies spending 132% more in aggregate legal fees, although the charges for our counsel to help with financings has doubled during the past ten years. What I see is that our companies go the “self help” route a lot more often than the past and do not seek legal help when it actually may be a good idea to do so. Unfortunately, a lot of it ends up on my plate and I end up rendering a lot of “informal” advice. It’s not a great position to be in, as I’m far past my days of being an every-day and competent lawyer, but what can companies do when they can’t afford to call their lawyers? So today, we have the worst of both worlds – disproportionately higher legal spend when compared to other costs and less actual legal counsel on situations that would previous dictate legal involvement.
Execution
While my first gripe pertains to nearly all lawyers, this frustration is more particularized to about 50% of the venture lawyers I run across. Simply put, why can’t lawyers know when to leave well enough alone and not feel like every piece of paper needs a mark up?
Especially given how expensive lawyers are these days, why on earth would the culture of “must mark up documents to show value” persist? (Answer: lawyers make more money). Especially in the world of venture financings this is very frustrating. Ten years ago, I admit there was a lot more mystery and uncertainty in getting venture financings done. However, with the advent of the NVCA model documents collection (of which I was a draftsperson), resources like the term sheet series that I co-wrote with my partner Brad Feld and just the sheer number of trained experts in the field, financings (especially early-staged deals) are largely cookie cutter.
Then why on earth did I have to spend last week negotiating registration rights with a partner at a major law firm? In fact, I got to do that twice last week along with other stupid boilerplate language that no one really cares about. Sigh. I got to watch our money that we financed the company with being transferred to the law firm. Perhaps the most annoying comment that I heard last week was from an experienced venture lawyer who told me that he got a set of documents that were perfect and that he and his teamed “struggled” to find things to mark up because they couldn’t just say the documents were fine after round one – even though they were. He had three lawyers on the deal work on the markup. Also last week I got to see a bill that one of our companies received from its law firm: $72,000 for a Series A financing. That was bad enough, but when you figured in the fact that our counsel drafted all the documents and charged close to $15,000, it was especially appalling. These deals are not complicated. This should not happen.
I’d like to point out that not all lawyers are like this – but at least half of them are and the problem is compounded by the compensation trends discussed above. The half that aren’t like this have learned that efficiency and reasonableness is respected more by clients than the optics of needless document revisions.
So what’s the resolution here? It’s a much longer answer than I can provide today. I’ve been working on a thesis for quite some time that the entire business model of law firms is going to have to change, or it’s going to get uglier. Eventually, venture-backed companies are going to have to move away from the traditional law firms that service them these days. In any event, law firms are going to need to realize that the fees charged to startups versus public companies and what fees are reasonable in litigation versus corporate contexts are all different and that “one size fits all pricing” will not work in the long run. If I ever finish my “Law Firm 2.0 business plan,” I’ll be happy to blog about it.
Frustration rant #1 over. Friends and colleagues, fire away…
Jason is a co-founder and managing director of Foundry Group, a Boulder, Colo.-based venture capital firm focused on early-stage IT opportunities. This post first appeared at his new blog, Mendelson’s Musings.
Matt said on June 1, 2008
Jason,
As a former partner at one of the brand name firms representing venture backed companies and now a GC, I agree with your view. The question is what do companies do about it and do big law firms realize what they are doing?
The related question is what do VC’s do about it because VC’s often drive the hiring of brand name counsel. How many law firms that VC’s recommend have profits per equity partner over $1 million? It is funded with the VC’s money to a great degree. VC funds are generally smaller than they were five or eight years ago, while law firm profits are markedly higher and fees are more expensive. It seems strange that fees continue to increase even as VC financings should be commoditized.
Five or so years ago, the major firms argument was that they would be a company’s outside GC and that efficiency would offset the higher rates, but even five to eight years ago associates were $250 per hour for mid-levels. With $300 per hour first years that argument seems to be out the window. I don’t think firms care about being outside “GC’s” anymore and I also think many firms do not realize/do not care how often their clients send work elsewhere due to cost.
For day to day advice on commercial agreements I’ve seem a significant increase in the number of high quality IP transactions lawyers working on their own or in small firms. At $250 or $300 per hour, these folks are a bargain. At the same time there are fewer and fewer big firms with decent IP transactions practices for day to day software deals. This is not a coincidence. More companies also seem to hire in-house counsel more quickly due to cost constraints.
If overpaying for brand name firm on a financing deal, a reasonably infrequent occurrence for most company’s, is needed to facilitate the financing and ultimately an exit then so be it. However, firms current fee structure does not build a relationship. It is possible that in five years landscape will look very different than it does now. If a relationship consists of attending a view Board meetings and a financing every few years, the law firm is an easily replaced widget.
I’d love to hear what you think the landscape will look like in five years, and what your “law firm 2.0 business plan is”.
Matt
jasonm said on June 1, 2008
Matt, many thanks. It’s nice to hear someone in your position think similarly. I think that I’m going to have to finish my 2.0 business plan and throw it out there for comment. Thanks for your support.
Check out my blog at http://www.jasonmendelson.com for the full hyperlinked story and other content.
Ed Goldstein said on June 2, 2008
Agree. Three comments: (1)using a mid-market firm (instead of a “brand name” firm will get professional results at significantly lower rates. Using a firm like Butzel Long (that uses its Detroit legal infrastructure as a back office) will lower costs even more;(2) consider flat-fee billing as an alternative to an hourly (load-on-the-hours)structure; and (3)consider using the firm described in (1) [and the fee structure described in (2)] to act as GC for a logical segment of your portfolio companies, thereby obtaining consistent, non-repetitive on-going advice at a more reasonable cost.
Ari Newman said on June 2, 2008
I recently went thru an angel financing (not even a full A round) and was hit with big bills for minor changes in terms and thousands of dollars to file amended articles. Then I got bills from the state registration entity to charge me more for the re-filing. All of this takes time and money out of the core business, which doesn’t help anyone (except for the law firm partners, I suppose). Frustrating.
Stuart Blake said on June 2, 2008
Jason,
You have raised many significant issues that start-up companies and in-house counsel have been trying to address for many years – the high cost and opportunity lost of traditional law firm services. In 2005, I co-founded a legal services firm, The General Counsel, LLC, to offer cost-effective, value-based, full and part-time general counsel services to start-up, fast-growth and mid-size companies. We provide industry proven, senior level general counsel attorneys to companies for a monthly retainer well below the cost of a traditional hourly rate law firm and with none of the overhead of adding a new department which makes it possible for companies to enjoy all of the advantages of having an experienced in-house attorney, on-site, contributing to the success of the management team. http://www.thegeneralcounsel.net
Stuart
Neil Wolff said on June 2, 2008
A bigger problem than billing rates are the venture law firms’ vintage 1970′s business processes. You flag that well in your points about negotiating boilerplate agreements – but it goes further than that, into the standard startup documents, the due diligence process (why do we still receive a box of documents? why doesn’t the law firm host a copy of all of their clients’ financing-related agreements?), the stock option/exercise documents (still done in paper, after all these years) and closing binders.
These law firms aren’t evil, they’re just overly focused on short term revenues and profits. Many of the partners in the firms which dominate the venture space have been working – slowly, slowly – to solve the same problems that frustrate you for a decade.
The law firm that solves these issues will be able to turn the billing model pyramid on its head, the same way that SaaS companies are showing that the enterprise software sales model is on its last legs.
As is always the case in a world with venture capital available, there’s an opportunity buried in shared pain…
Neil
Matt said on June 2, 2008
Neil,
You would know better than anyone about law firm models, since you were a WSGR partner before moving to VantagePoint. I am curious how you and Jason think this gets solved. The VC backed company model is an interesting one. PE/buyout fund backed companies, who typically have a controlling shareholder, generally enforce use of “their” counsel for corporate and acquistion matters to assure consistent advice and at least some degree of cost effectiveness–or a conscious choice to use expensive firms. VC’s however do not enforce a choice of counsel–generally permitting any “reputable” firm–so each individual company and each group of VC’s have less leverage over firms. VC’s seem to prefer brand name firms to protect themselves from exposure on various fronts but I believe generally do not appreciate the day to day items that simply do not get reviewed by counsel because a company’s primary counsel is too expensive.
The basic transactions, VC financings, should cost less than they did in 2000. More firms know the basics of financings, fewer basic due diligence screw ups exist, we are past the “recap boom” that required a lot of hard thinking in 2001-2003, etc. But financings generally cost a lot more. How do you fix this?
Mike said on June 2, 2008
As a partner in a large law firm for several years and then an entrepreneur, I have had the opportunity to deal with this issue on both sides. In my experience, the easiest way to deal with the excessive fees is to place a cap on the legal work for these “cookie cutter” deals. In the late 1990s, we would typically do the legal work for the investors on the Series A rounds at a $10K cap. The work of investor counsel is two-fold: 1) drafting and negotiating the investment documents, and 2) performing legal due diligence. In most early stage companies, legal due diligence should be relatively straight forward since the company has not been in existence long enough to create any meaningful amount of paper or issues to deal with. On the drafting side, these are templates. Lawyers like to make it seem very complicated but the reality is that they are forms that need a modest amount of tweaking.
The cap number may have increased with inflation and rising costs, but it will keep everyone honest and drive efficiencies. It is also the responsibility of the investors and company executives to emphasize the cap and drive these efficiences.
Joe said on June 2, 2008
I’m a former “brand name” Valley firm lawyer but now work at a fund. Lots of different angles to this, so easier to just throw out issues/facts (some of which seems schizo, i know, but i appreciate both sides to this discussion):
- brand name law firms make money on financings through inefficiency. It’s just part of the model. When things are busy, venture deals are typically handled by mid-level and junior associates b/c they are an easy way to train associates to learn basic corporate attorney stuff (draft docs, interface with clients, negotiate deal points, etc. – and they’re learning as they’re doing, generally, and not looking over shoulders) and are generally perceived to be the least complicated deals on the totem pole of firm deals (financings vs. M&A vs. IPO) – which is why the mid-levels and juniors do most of the heavy lifting on them. So mid-levels and juniors are doing much of the work and, as a result, spend 2x-3x times as long getting stuff done, b/c they don’t know what to focus on (i.e., what matters), which only comes from experience, which only comes from doing the deals higher up on the totem pole, because most of the important terms in the docs relate to future events that few, if any, of the mid-levels and juniors have any real appreciation for, so it’s a big cycle of inefficiency. There is a sweet market opp for senior associate / junior partner types with complementary skill sets (corporate, IP, exec comp, tax, etc.) at brand name firms to branch out and form a firm, not over commit re how many clients they take on, undercut the brand name firms on price by a lot, and provide services that solo guys and other small firms can’t provide (b/c, if solo guys/gals, they’re jacks/janes of all trades , masters of nothing or b/c, if a small firm, their associate ranks can’t match up with those at the brand name firms).
- salaries went to 125K back in the go-go days b/c associates could spend 6-12 months at brand name Valley firms and then move over to clients and get rich on paper, plus people were losing their minds working at 2700-3000 billables / yr clips (which in SV basically gave you no time to do anything except sit in traffic on the 101 (hwy between SF and SV) and work 6-7 days/week). Downtime was spent doing exciting stuff like the 30-days of laundry piled up in the corner. So firms needed a way to compete to retain associates and gave the 50% salary bump. Fast forward to last year and the fact that associates were suddenly back at the printer working on S-1s for the first time in years, clocking escalating hours, opportunities to go in-house to companies/clients were back in play, and suddenly it was deja vu all over again, and so up things went to 165K (true, all started in NYC, but same facts related to burnout are there too). The other factor that comes into retention is that it costs a whole bunch to live in SV, Boston, etc. 165K seems like a lot everywhere else, but it isn’t here. I can spit and hit dozens of folks making 165K (even 200K) in SV and only a small handful of them can actually afford to live here (own a house, do normal stuff that someone making 165K should be able to do). And there is no housing slowdown here. Sure, the $1.5M 3/2 rancher may not sell in 5 days, just sells in 20 days. It doesn’t help to have thousands of Google millionaires running around looking for houses to buy. NYC is even worse re cost of living. So, all in all, if you want to attract/retain the best people, you have to pay them to be willing to live in a place in which no one can really afford to live. That then gets passed on to the consumer, like every other business.
- Fee caps on investor-side deals haven’t gone up appreciably in 10 years. $25K-$35K is still the going rate for domestic deals (at least in SV). Firms ate a whole bunch of time in the downturn b/c recaps couldn’t get done for that much b/c the lawyers were being asked to do the math while the CFO was trying to figure out how to cut the burn. So firms can rightfully argue that they haven’t passed on their increasing expenses on the investor side of things.
- Being on this side of the aisle makes me realize more than ever that good, deal-experienced lawyers are just hard to find. A healthy majority just aren’t that good. So if you can find a stable you like, they’re pretty much worth it to give you some peace of mind. Most of the brand name firms (with a few exceptions) are just better at representing VCs and startups than other firms b/c they have people who’ve done more deals than associates at other firms (even accounting for point #1 above) and generally know what matters. The senior partners are just better resources, and the senior associates / junior partners, if you’re lucky enough to get them to actually work on the deal, are just better at it. I’ve worked with folks from all over, big and small, and for what a basic VC is trying to do the brand names are just more reliable when it comes to the stuff that matters.
- I don’t think most VCs and entrepreneurs appreciate lawyers. I think they view them as necessary evils who shuffle paper in a financing as part of some required process to get money in the door so the company can get back to running its business. So there’s a lot of dialog about figuring out a way to pay them less because they’re perceived as just a bunch of service providers who send me an annoying bill for stuff done by people some of whom i’ve never heard of, and people can’t figure out why once the business deal has been agreed to it takes an entire month to close the deal (I mean, do these lawyers think they have other deals to work on besides mine???). Everyone i know who has left private practice and is now on the other end of one of those bills has the same complaint. It’s funny how we’ve forgotten where we all started. I’m happy to pay the good ones the money, b/c I appreciate folks who can connect the dots, who make sure the voting thresholds work, who focus on what an amendment provision says b/c that may impact a company’s ability to get something done in the future, who know what the Code actually says (b/c it’s different in CA than in DE), all that stuff. That’s important stuff (to me, at least), and lots of lawyers gloss over all that stuff but go to the mat on the friggin’ knowledge qualifiers in the SPA b/c they will be damned if their software client is going to give a clean rep that it hasn’t violated any environmental laws, or worse fight back when company counsel makes the i’ll be damned argument. I’ll pay the extra $10K to the ones that don’t make me look like a boob in front of the CEO we’re about to start a multi-year (hopefully) relationship with.
- Lawyers make nothing compared to bankers, and people never complain about how much bankers make. Lawyers should start charging 3-5% of the total take and people might stop complaining. So raise a round of $5M and the lawyers walk away with $150K. Where’s the post about how bankers fees are ridiculous? [That’s the fix, by the way. That, and flat fees. People get less fired up when focused on %s and flat fees than when they get billed by the hour – they come to terms with it at the outset, forecast it, and then it’s done. They move on. Getting a bill every month based on time spent is like getting your Visa bill – you think you know what it’s going to be but there are those months where you’re like “Holy S@#$!â€
Jason Mendelson said on June 2, 2008
I agree that there is a definite lack of high quality folks. And perhaps I wasn’t clear, but for high quality we are willing to pay, as should our companies.
One more clarification – there are lawyers at big firms whom I’ve never had issue with their billing practices. But this is the clear exception, not the norm.
Ben said on June 3, 2008
Given where rates are, on deals w/a little hair, $25-35k fee caps (for VC counsel) and $50-75k fee caps (for company counsel) work, barely, if almost all the work is done by a competent lawyer who has run 50+ venture deals and costs less than $425 and hour. However, most sub-$425 per hour attys w/that many deals under their belt are senior associates trying to make partner or junior partners trying to increase their comp. You typically aren’t going to position yourself to reach those goals doing a bunch of Series A deals where the clients will howl and scream if the bill exceeds $35k. As a result, unless you are a lawyer who loves venture deals and working with entrepreneurs more than you love $$ and career advancement, you’re going to angle for higher margin work. The exception was ’99-’00 when law firms were firing their public company clients to work on venture deals (why not, it seemed like all ventures deals were leading to high-margin IPO work). Unless we can repeat of ’99-’00 (this solves a few other problems as well), name brand law firms have to lower rates for start-ups/VCs but change their comp/partnership decisions to reward lawyers who work on these deals even if their economics are less attractive than M&A work. There is a rationale for this, SV law firm involvment in early stage work is crucial to their role in the SV ecosystem/referral network (referrals of companies to underwriters, introductions to VCs, recommendations of “friends of the firm” directors for public company boards, etc.). I guess, so far anyway, it’s not a compelling enough rationale to justify lower rates for start-ups and VCs.
Donna Fabian said on June 3, 2008
I’m a recent law graduate interested in practicing patent prosecution and other start-up issues. My start-ups law professor preached over and over not to waste clients’ time with unimportant terms and issues. It’s silly (and not to mention immoral) to waste your clients’ time, especially because sophisticated clients know when they’re being screwed with and they won’t come back to you with their next deal/issue. It is disheartening to hear that you think 50% of us are evil. What have I gotten myself into?
Jeremy Glaser said on June 3, 2008
I have practiced law as a technology and venture capital lawyer for over 20 years at major firms and have served as in-house counsel at a venture-backed technology company. While I definitely agree with many of the points made by Jason and in certain of the comments, I have learned over the years that the keys to being able to do high quality work on VC deals, whether on the company side or the investor side, are:
1) clear communication about the role the outside attorney is to play. Fees can get out of hand quickly in diligencing a company for example or on reviewing contracts for a “no conflicts” opinion. Having the VC use internal resources to do the diligence as much as possible and getting agreement up front that company counsel will not be required to deliver a “no conflicts” opinion will save time and money on the deal with no real loss of benefit to the VCs. The company representations and indemnity get the VCs most of the way and then they can identify specific contracts or areas of concern where spending money on outside attorneys to give a thorough review gives sufficient bang for the buck.
2)Control the staffing. No VC deal should require more than one partner and one associate (and perhaps a paralegal). Fees get out of hand when partners pass the deal down to a mid-level associate who then delegates down to one or more junior associates. There is no way a VC deal can be done within the usual fee cap parameters ($25-35K for investor counsel and $50-75K for company counsel) without careful management of the numbers of attorneys on the deal. All companies and VC funds should insist that no attorney works on their financing without prior approval (and you should refuse to pay for any time that is incured by attorneys you did not pre-approve).
3. Constant communication of deal costs. Waiting for the monthly bill to be sent out does not work for a VC deal. The typical VC deal is completed in less than 30 days from start to finish once the letter of intent is signed. That leaves no room to manage the fees and the work being done. I always deliver a weekly “flash report” on all VC deals I work on. Each week the client (the VC or the company) gets an email with an estimate of the fees that were incurred in the prior week and to date. This simple act of communication has amazing benefits: it avoids the surprise that everyone hates at the end of the deal when the bill arrives sometimes 45 days or more after the deal closed and it creates the perfect opportunity to have a weekly conversation about what was done in the prior week and whether it was necessary or can be either cut back or addressed in a different way (i.e., the VC or company can do more internally or can decide that the issue is not so important after all given the cost of pursuing it).
4. Don’t have lawyers do things that you don’t need lawyers to do. This is a constant theme per above but it is amazing how VCs and companies don’t think about the expensive resource they are using for non-legal matters. Why do the lawyers have to handle the exchange of signature pages? Or the wire transfer instructions and confirmations? In fact, most of the things that happen at a typical closing do not require legal skills at all and can be handled by a good CFO or other employee at either the company or the VC firm. This alone saves thousands of dollars.
While VCs and companies are quick to point to high hourly rates and arrogant or greedy lawyers as the reason for high fees (and they are not entirely wrong on either count), the reality is that VC financings can be done efficiently with just a little bit of management applied. I have been able to do deals for years even with escalating rates within the caps (and often coming in below them) by applying these principles for my clients.
Jason Mendelson said on June 3, 2008
Jeremy, great post. Consider me “done” with no conflict opinions if we can save some material amount of money. I’m going to follow up this post with a series of posts called Law Firm 2.0 in the coming days and hope that you don’t mind me using some of your ideas and crediting them to you.
Steve said on June 3, 2008
I’d like to add my perspective as a corporate lawyer at a “big firm”. Ten years ago I focused almost exclusively on VC deals. But I basically backed away from the practice to focus on later stage private equity, M&A and public securities because VC deals are simply too small to justify big law firm rates. You can’t run a large firm practice these days on $50K a deal unless you are just cranking them out. The expectations for partners at most major firms are simply too great to permit them to handle VC deals.
As a result, VCs and start-ups should be hiring smaller firms with lower rates. If the deals are relatively standard or “cookie-cutter” then you don’t really need the best legal talent at OM&M, L&W or Skadden to handle them, do you? No, you just need someone who is competent and experienced. It’s not the fault of the profession. It’s the fault of the VC or start-up that hires the big firm when they should have hired a firm with lower rates. I’m sure there are dozens of smaller firms in SV and SF that would love the opportunity to take on more work at $400/hr for a partner. In effect, you are ranting because the start-ups in which you invest are poor consumers of legal services. That doesn’t seem fair to me.
Second, in my experience large bills on deals are almost exclusively the result of either inexperienced lawyers or deal parties who change the deal terms midstream. I’ve proven to clients that it is possible to substantially reduce deal fees simply by (i) completing 90% of the negotiations at the LOI or term sheet stage of the deal and (ii) setting clear ground rules up front with the other side about the amount of time (number of negotiating rounds) that you’re willing to put into a deal. An elegantly crafted email that is sent before negotiations begin which states the expectations of the lead party (VC, investor, buyer) regarding the amount of time that it expects (is willing) to put into negotiations will set the stage for an efficient deal.
To be perfectly honest, lawyers also don’t like it when deals drag on and fees pile up. We feel the pressue to get deals done and keep fees down. Nobody likes having to call a good client and explain why a deal that was expected to cost $100K wound up at $200K. Typically, those situations wind up resulting in discounts to bills, which damages the partner’s realization rate and could impact his or her client relationship.
In short, you’ll be extremely well served by being a smarter consumer and working with your lawyers on strategies for keeping fees down. As a result, you’ll save a few bucks and have much better relationships with your lawyers.
Irwin Schwartz said on June 4, 2008
Simply put, one size fits all for legal services yields dramatic inefficiencies. More cynically, brand name firms provide services at prices that the VC market will absorb. That’s capitalism, baby. More attentive VCs will match their needs to more aggresively priced legal services, which will bring downward pressure on brand name pricing by discounts or efficient delivery of services or both. That too is capitalism. This thread is loaded with good leads to find aggressively-priced legal services and there are many excellent boutique and small market firms out there that will jump at the chance to undercut brand name pricing.
Michael said on June 6, 2008
Our http://www.vcexperts.com is used by the majority of venture/pe firms, but many startups and VC’s have failed to realize that they can save a tremendous amount in overall legal fees by using us themselves. Why pay the firm to do what you can do yourself????? Granted, you need them to close the deal, but alot of the documents and other “exhaustive” due diligence can be done independently.
Jeremy Glaser said on June 6, 2008
Thanks Jason. Of course feel free to reference any of the ideas I discussed and, of course, to implement them!
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Justin Copeland said on January 18, 2010
I agree with you completely, which is why my law firm, The Copeland Law Firm PC, in Austin, TX, charges a flat fee for Series A and Convertible Debt financings that ranges between $5,000 and $10,000 depending upon the players involved and the complexity of the deal. The fee is quoted up front so that both the startup and the investors know what to expect.
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