John Linton
Perhaps you remember the line in Jurassic Park where the Richard Attenborough character says, almost in despair, "Only the blood sucking lawyer is on my side!"
Annette and I have been extremely fortunate in our business and private lives to have encountered, and used on occasions over the past 30 years in both our business and private lives, a "blood sucking lawyer" who not only was a thoroughly decent man but who took a genuine interest in our affairs when dealing with the law was required and cared enough to always do an immaculately researched and perfectly prepared job in 'defending' our interests.
In Exetel's brief corporate life we have only had to use his law firm twice - once getting a refund from Telstra and once to deal with the unethical and crazy aaNet. Both results were excellent.
When we first knew him he was a young lawyer who was the principal partner in his own law firm who was recommended to us by our accountant whom we had also known for a long time. Over the years his start up partnership merged with ever larger entities where, until the last major merger, he remained the chairman of partners. In this article in yesterday's Australian:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22179326-17044,00.html
the firm with whom he merged some two years ago was the subject of a glowing write up on its development and progress over the past few years. I was particularly struck by this comment in the article:
"We run flat and lean, we are hands-on. We have no grandiose concepts of the business. We have not put up our partner rates for three or four years, and profit has gone through the roof."
which directly reflect the aspirations for and the way we operate Exetel (except for the "profits going through the roof" which just isn't either possible or part of our plans).
If you're lucky in your private and commercial life you will never need the services of a lawyer but that is becoming a rarity. If you ever do need a lawyer then it would be wise to put as much time and research in to finding a lawyer (and I stress LAWYER as opposed to Law Firm) before you need one. If you're an 'average' person you won't know many or even any lawyers so the best advice on finding a good lawyer is to find someone with knowledge on this subject and seek their advice.
You may be "shocked" when you find out how much good legal advice and assistance costs you but, speaking from personal experience and observation, "cheap" legal advice is the most expensive you can get.