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Freedom of Contract
Cerberus Capital, a well-known private equity fund, recently won a short trial in the Delaware Chancery Court allowing it to terminate its acquisition agreement with United Rentals and pay the $100 million termination fee set forth in the contract. The WSJ article spells out the details and the background well, referencing the actual parties and the negotiations backdrop. The critical item of analysis, missing from much of the commentary we've seen [link to WSJ law blog?], is an analysis of the points on which the opinion turns. (For simplicity, we'll generally refer to all Cerberus defendants as Buyer and United Rentals as Target.)
Reviewing the actual opinion, here is the critical language relied on by Cerberus from Section 8.2(e), part of the termination provision:
The language United Rentals suggested was controlling involved a specific performance provision (Section 9.10) of typical structure allowing for the seeking of injunctions to compel performance, but specifically exempting Section 8.2(e) from its purview (and Section 8.2(e) specifically notes that it supersedes 9.10).
The opinion first describes why the interpretations of the parties are both reasonable, eliminating the opportunity to resolve the case by summary judgment. Then, the opinion describes the extrinsic evidence about the shared intention of the parties, concluding essentially that the Buyer consistently rejected the specific performance remedy and that Target eventually acquiesced to edits that Buyer believed eliminated that remedy. The case might indeed be one that turns on procedure as much as anything else; Target had the burden of proving Buyer's intent and was unable to meet that burden; the opinion notes that the matter is an "exceedingly close question" in some respects. Also, the use of the forthright negotiator principle indicates that openness in negotiations actually can be rewarded: since Buyer's belief that the termination fee was Target's only remedy was well-communicated to Target, Target's failure to respond with its interpretation of the contract language during negotiations works against it during litigation.
The key point for business and lawyers to remember is that a party is captain of its offer; that is, the party making the offer to the other has the right to set whatever conditions it wants on the offer and acceptance (short of public policy violations). In other words, it's perfectly reasonable for Cerberus to reject any specific performance remedy in the contract and, by extension, perfectly reasonable for United Rentals to reject a deal that allows Cerberus to walk away. Moving to a deeper level of analysis, the meaning of contracts is tied inextricably to the remedies afforded in the event of breach. Both risk and reward are equally linked in this
respect.
A wise deal champion, listening to experienced counsel, will strive to create deal structures that are either self-enforcing, such as dead-hand provisions operating to implement conditions subsequent or covenants, or are clear about what the downside looks like for both parties. Discussing risk during the negotiation of a contract is not weakness; it's sophistication. Experienced deal participants know that deals break down in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. Ignoring these possibilities to appear to be "positive" or "trusting" or "a team player" is foolish; only by harping on the negative do you eliminate those perceptions. It's often been said, and often repeated by us, that good deal structures don't require one party to trust the other; they make the deal support the development of trust between the parties by getting out of the way of that trust rather than relying on it.
In a later post, we'll discuss this concept of proper structure in light of the actual costs of small-business litigation, the sort of <$250,000 claim that can arise in any number of businesses.
Also, the discussion that the deletion of the offending specific performance provision rather than the circuitous "subject to" language would have been less ambiguous reminds us to discuss the practical effects of simply working too much. We assume that Buyer's counsel worked an incredible amount on this transaction and probably many others as well. More to follow.
Introducing the Wolfhound Fund
To make as much of an impact as possible in the shortest time, we would like to launch using a wiki format, which would allow stakeholders to provide information on metrics and measurements as well as provide a forum for discussion as the information is reviewed. [As an aside, while our primary webhost finalizes its support for Mediawiki, we're looking for a fairly priced private hosting solution that will allow us to host the wiki under the wolfhoundfund.org domain and migrate it if we choose to do so; recommendations are welcomed.] We'll start scouring the universe of nonprofit resources to seed the discussions with strategy trees for the various issues as well as piecing together metrics for each strategy and disclosed measurements for nonprofits revealing such information.
We're excited about this and hope that we can help spotlight those nonprofit entrepreneurs who are changing the world for the better by wringing every benefit out of every hour and every dollar.
Gates, Buffett, and sour grapes. We recently came across this brief interview from a "political philosopher." Of course, that's not going to mix well with our nothing-but-the-fundamentals view of business and achieving goals. (We tend to leave the philosophy for the goal-setting.)
In brief, the gentleman says that Warren Buffett's generous gift to charity, rivaling the US's most revered benefactors, is broken for a couple reasons: first, we should have more foundations rather than fewer; second, the Gates Foundation will be a monopoly, which isn't good for it or for philanthropy; third, Buffett has no right to use his money for private charity unless he does better than the public, i.e., government sector.
Here are some of the other points that concern us about the article:
1. The statement that "All wealth is derived from the commonwealth" gets us in a tizzy. It brings to mind a quote from one of our well-read lawyers: "I think we fought a war over that once." The reference should be to the Declaration of Independence: "--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed." Governments exist because we choose to give them money and power and to reasonably submit to their will. The state is the charity, not the free market.
2. The fellow also seems to misunderstand why the free market is generally considered to be a good thing by proponents. No one really cares about there being a multitude of market participants serving the marketplace. A fragmented market is no guarantee of quality. However, if firms can evolve because of competitive pressures, then multiple companies will (and ought to, in the prescriptive sense) go out of business as failures. All that's required to make this work is competitive pressure; you don't really need a plethora of firms in the market. Hint: that's why the DOJ/FTC are concerned about "market power" and not concentration. If it's easy to enter a market, competition does not have to be real to be felt and responded to. Well-run companies improve their products and services before competition can harm their businesses. Self-cannibalization is the smartest path; we recall a book title along the lines of "eat your own lunch before someone else does."
3. " Bundling software and hardware, a kind of monopoly, was a bad thing for Gates' Microsoft. That's why the government sued." We're just confused by this, which makes us wonder why someone would write it. Our understanding is that it's pretty clear that monopolies price higher in a way to maximize their benefit, to the detriment of society. This is the first time we've heard of the argument that it's a bad thing for a monopoly to be a monopoly. It's possible that this argument would make sense if you made a few assumptions, such as that the company had no other ideas about how to deploy capital and so research and development efforts languished. That begs the question of whether companies need to perpetuate their existence. Schumpeter would probably disagree that there's any inherent benefit to companies qua companies continuing to exist. That's a different question from dislocation effects that are experienced (or suffered, depending on where you stand) from creative destruction. The whole point of a monopoly might be to extract capital from society, redistribute it to stakeholders and investors and then let reinvestment take the "let a thousand flowers bloom" approach. If monopolies are efficient at turning revenue into profit, then that isn't a ridiculous idea.
4. The government sector's efficacy notwithstanding, there is a long tradition in America of doing more than the government does. For example, some people might say that the federal government should not fund an activity, such as a church. So private persons elect to do that. The next step is to recognize that some people think the government should spend more money on an activity, such as environmental protection. So private persons elect to do that. We balance the income and expenditure issues at the federal, state, and local levels through the miracle of politics (the balancing of competing interests is the essence of politics), and then people operate against that backdrop.
Now for the efficacy question: we often read about factors that seem like they are related to charitable efficacy and efficiency, but they are really stories about things that are proxies at best for those things. For example, administrative expenses as a percentage of overall expenses is a common item used to rank/evaluate charities. Clearly, money spent on administration is not available for charitable activities. However, does anyone believe that operating without administrative expenses is likely to increase actual efficacy, the securing of positive results, however measured, from the charity's activities?
The issue of separating efficacy from efficiency from proxies for those items is a question that has interested us for nearly two years now, and we are finally ready to do something about it. We are completing an article detailing the issues surrounding the problem as well as finalizing plans for the launch of a nonprofit organization to guide the creation, collection, collation, and synthesis of measures of charitable efficacy for various types of organizations. Notably, the Robin Hood Foundation (http://www.robinhood.org/index.cfm) undertook some of this type of investigation (http://www.robinhood.org/approach/metrics.cfm) to support and tune (http://www.robinhood.org/approach/results.cfm) its own grantmaking, but we believe a comprehensive approach would benefit society -- recipients of charitable activity, donors, employees, officers, and directors of charitable organizations, and indeed, those organizations that do better than others. As a society, we should want to reward those organizations that are making a difference from those that are not.
Clearly, an apples-to-apples comparison is required; it makes little sense to compare Habitat for Humanity's impact on homelessness to that of a legal aid foundation that represents the homeless from an advocacy group that drafts, comments on, and challenges legislation. While reasonable people may disagree and debate the wisdom of different allocations of funds among those various efforts, that debate is much more complicated and unlikely to be resolved by our project. What we hope to do is clarify whether "hovels for humanity" is more or less efficient at implementing the same anti-homelessness strategy as Habitat. We'll soon create a separate post to draw the parallels between our current financial analysis approach to for-profit companies and this evolving approach for analyzing non-profits. We are currently investigating wiki platforms for the initial launch of the project so we can start moving while we finalize the plan.
Finding a lawyer or law firm
In general, as you're evaluating other referrals you might get, we think that you'll want to stay away from a larger firm (anything over 20 lawyers) unless your business is already well beyond the "just-started small IT consulting firm" phase. You should probably aim for a group of under 10 lawyers, getting a corporate generalist to handle those matters and one litigator to write letters and advise you on disputes. (Note that you should expect not to actually litigate anything unless there's well over $50k at risk, since the costs of litigation are just too high.) What you want on that litigation front is good advice more than an available trial team. Finally, depending on your accountant, you may benefit from having a tax lawyer in the group to give you more high-value tax advice.
Reviewing the actual opinion, here is the critical language relied on by Cerberus from Section 8.2(e), part of the termination provision:
In no event, whether or not this Agreement has been terminated pursuant to any provision hereof, shall [Buyer] ... be subject to any liability in excess of the Parent Termination Fee for any or all losses or damages relating to or arising out of this Agreement or the transactions contemplated by this Agreement, including(NB: the opinion is available here: WSJ link.)
breaches by [Buyer] of any representations, warranties, covenants or agreements contained in this Agreement, and in no event shall the [Target] seek equitable relief or seek to recover any money damages in excess of such amount from [Buyer] or any of their respective Representatives.
The language United Rentals suggested was controlling involved a specific performance provision (Section 9.10) of typical structure allowing for the seeking of injunctions to compel performance, but specifically exempting Section 8.2(e) from its purview (and Section 8.2(e) specifically notes that it supersedes 9.10).
The opinion first describes why the interpretations of the parties are both reasonable, eliminating the opportunity to resolve the case by summary judgment. Then, the opinion describes the extrinsic evidence about the shared intention of the parties, concluding essentially that the Buyer consistently rejected the specific performance remedy and that Target eventually acquiesced to edits that Buyer believed eliminated that remedy. The case might indeed be one that turns on procedure as much as anything else; Target had the burden of proving Buyer's intent and was unable to meet that burden; the opinion notes that the matter is an "exceedingly close question" in some respects. Also, the use of the forthright negotiator principle indicates that openness in negotiations actually can be rewarded: since Buyer's belief that the termination fee was Target's only remedy was well-communicated to Target, Target's failure to respond with its interpretation of the contract language during negotiations works against it during litigation.
The key point for business and lawyers to remember is that a party is captain of its offer; that is, the party making the offer to the other has the right to set whatever conditions it wants on the offer and acceptance (short of public policy violations). In other words, it's perfectly reasonable for Cerberus to reject any specific performance remedy in the contract and, by extension, perfectly reasonable for United Rentals to reject a deal that allows Cerberus to walk away. Moving to a deeper level of analysis, the meaning of contracts is tied inextricably to the remedies afforded in the event of breach. Both risk and reward are equally linked in this
respect.
A wise deal champion, listening to experienced counsel, will strive to create deal structures that are either self-enforcing, such as dead-hand provisions operating to implement conditions subsequent or covenants, or are clear about what the downside looks like for both parties. Discussing risk during the negotiation of a contract is not weakness; it's sophistication. Experienced deal participants know that deals break down in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. Ignoring these possibilities to appear to be "positive" or "trusting" or "a team player" is foolish; only by harping on the negative do you eliminate those perceptions. It's often been said, and often repeated by us, that good deal structures don't require one party to trust the other; they make the deal support the development of trust between the parties by getting out of the way of that trust rather than relying on it.
In a later post, we'll discuss this concept of proper structure in light of the actual costs of small-business litigation, the sort of <$250,000 claim that can arise in any number of businesses.
Also, the discussion that the deletion of the offending specific performance provision rather than the circuitous "subject to" language would have been less ambiguous reminds us to discuss the practical effects of simply working too much. We assume that Buyer's counsel worked an incredible amount on this transaction and probably many others as well. More to follow.
Monday, December 31, 2007 :: posted by Rick Colosimo @ 6:01 PM
Introducing the Wolfhound Fund
Michael Princi and Rick Colosimo announce the founding of The Wolfhound Fund, a nonprofit entity, whose mission is to help nonprofits and their officers and directors with increasing the returns on the social capital invested in and by the organization. This ROSC measure corresponds to the use of ROIC for for-profit entities. In general, ROSC seeks to account for all the inputs of society to an organization, from donations to volunteer time to the federal tax shield, which are transformed by the organization into outputs including services, cost of services, and operating expenses in much the same way that ROIC describes how a for-profit company increases revenue, turns invested capital into revenue through capital efficiency, and turns revenue into operating profit through operating efficiency. It is our deep experience investigating and understanding this foundation, the operating performance of traditional companies, in hundreds of examples that has led us to the realization that similar performance metrics for nonprofit organizations would greatly enhance strategic review by nonprofit boards and improve transparency for donors.
The Wolfhound Fund will oversee the collection, creation, collaboration, and refinement of metrics for effectiveness and efficiency for nonprofit organizations, allowing entities to benchmark themselves against organizations pursuing similar strategies. For example, legal aid groups that represent the homeless in government benefits litigation should not be compared, from an operational prospective, against those groups that provide typical homeless shelter benefits. While donors and organizations may debate the relative merits of pursuing different strategies, our goal is to assist the management, the officers and directors, of these organizations assess how well they are executing their chosen strategy. In our personal and professional backgrounds, we have always presented our advice thoroughly grounded in the operational world, and that's the level at which the Wolfhound Fund itself will operate.
To make as much of an impact as possible in the shortest time, we would like to launch using a wiki format, which would allow stakeholders to provide information on metrics and measurements as well as provide a forum for discussion as the information is reviewed. [As an aside, while our primary webhost finalizes its support for Mediawiki, we're looking for a fairly priced private hosting solution that will allow us to host the wiki under the wolfhoundfund.org domain and migrate it if we choose to do so; recommendations are welcomed.] We'll start scouring the universe of nonprofit resources to seed the discussions with strategy trees for the various issues as well as piecing together metrics for each strategy and disclosed measurements for nonprofits revealing such information.
We're excited about this and hope that we can help spotlight those nonprofit entrepreneurs who are changing the world for the better by wringing every benefit out of every hour and every dollar.
Labels: nonprofit, wolfhound fund
:: posted by Rick Colosimo @ 4:14 PM
Gates, Buffett, and sour grapes. We recently came across this brief interview from a "political philosopher." Of course, that's not going to mix well with our nothing-but-the-fundamentals view of business and achieving goals. (We tend to leave the philosophy for the goal-setting.)
In brief, the gentleman says that Warren Buffett's generous gift to charity, rivaling the US's most revered benefactors, is broken for a couple reasons: first, we should have more foundations rather than fewer; second, the Gates Foundation will be a monopoly, which isn't good for it or for philanthropy; third, Buffett has no right to use his money for private charity unless he does better than the public, i.e., government sector.
Here are some of the other points that concern us about the article:
1. The statement that "All wealth is derived from the commonwealth" gets us in a tizzy. It brings to mind a quote from one of our well-read lawyers: "I think we fought a war over that once." The reference should be to the Declaration of Independence: "--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed." Governments exist because we choose to give them money and power and to reasonably submit to their will. The state is the charity, not the free market.
2. The fellow also seems to misunderstand why the free market is generally considered to be a good thing by proponents. No one really cares about there being a multitude of market participants serving the marketplace. A fragmented market is no guarantee of quality. However, if firms can evolve because of competitive pressures, then multiple companies will (and ought to, in the prescriptive sense) go out of business as failures. All that's required to make this work is competitive pressure; you don't really need a plethora of firms in the market. Hint: that's why the DOJ/FTC are concerned about "market power" and not concentration. If it's easy to enter a market, competition does not have to be real to be felt and responded to. Well-run companies improve their products and services before competition can harm their businesses. Self-cannibalization is the smartest path; we recall a book title along the lines of "eat your own lunch before someone else does."
3. " Bundling software and hardware, a kind of monopoly, was a bad thing for Gates' Microsoft. That's why the government sued." We're just confused by this, which makes us wonder why someone would write it. Our understanding is that it's pretty clear that monopolies price higher in a way to maximize their benefit, to the detriment of society. This is the first time we've heard of the argument that it's a bad thing for a monopoly to be a monopoly. It's possible that this argument would make sense if you made a few assumptions, such as that the company had no other ideas about how to deploy capital and so research and development efforts languished. That begs the question of whether companies need to perpetuate their existence. Schumpeter would probably disagree that there's any inherent benefit to companies qua companies continuing to exist. That's a different question from dislocation effects that are experienced (or suffered, depending on where you stand) from creative destruction. The whole point of a monopoly might be to extract capital from society, redistribute it to stakeholders and investors and then let reinvestment take the "let a thousand flowers bloom" approach. If monopolies are efficient at turning revenue into profit, then that isn't a ridiculous idea.
4. The government sector's efficacy notwithstanding, there is a long tradition in America of doing more than the government does. For example, some people might say that the federal government should not fund an activity, such as a church. So private persons elect to do that. The next step is to recognize that some people think the government should spend more money on an activity, such as environmental protection. So private persons elect to do that. We balance the income and expenditure issues at the federal, state, and local levels through the miracle of politics (the balancing of competing interests is the essence of politics), and then people operate against that backdrop.
Now for the efficacy question: we often read about factors that seem like they are related to charitable efficacy and efficiency, but they are really stories about things that are proxies at best for those things. For example, administrative expenses as a percentage of overall expenses is a common item used to rank/evaluate charities. Clearly, money spent on administration is not available for charitable activities. However, does anyone believe that operating without administrative expenses is likely to increase actual efficacy, the securing of positive results, however measured, from the charity's activities?
The issue of separating efficacy from efficiency from proxies for those items is a question that has interested us for nearly two years now, and we are finally ready to do something about it. We are completing an article detailing the issues surrounding the problem as well as finalizing plans for the launch of a nonprofit organization to guide the creation, collection, collation, and synthesis of measures of charitable efficacy for various types of organizations. Notably, the Robin Hood Foundation (http://www.robinhood.org/index.cfm) undertook some of this type of investigation (http://www.robinhood.org/approach/metrics.cfm) to support and tune (http://www.robinhood.org/approach/results.cfm) its own grantmaking, but we believe a comprehensive approach would benefit society -- recipients of charitable activity, donors, employees, officers, and directors of charitable organizations, and indeed, those organizations that do better than others. As a society, we should want to reward those organizations that are making a difference from those that are not.
Clearly, an apples-to-apples comparison is required; it makes little sense to compare Habitat for Humanity's impact on homelessness to that of a legal aid foundation that represents the homeless from an advocacy group that drafts, comments on, and challenges legislation. While reasonable people may disagree and debate the wisdom of different allocations of funds among those various efforts, that debate is much more complicated and unlikely to be resolved by our project. What we hope to do is clarify whether "hovels for humanity" is more or less efficient at implementing the same anti-homelessness strategy as Habitat. We'll soon create a separate post to draw the parallels between our current financial analysis approach to for-profit companies and this evolving approach for analyzing non-profits. We are currently investigating wiki platforms for the initial launch of the project so we can start moving while we finalize the plan.
Labels: nonprofit, wolfhound fund
Thursday, December 27, 2007 :: posted by TSC team @ 3:00 PM
Finding a lawyer or law firm
We see (and get) emails like this all the time (NB: one of us is a former practicing corporate lawyer):
Rather than continue to draft responses, we've decided to put most of our advice here so that folks can get much closer to what they're likely to want or need.
Some general advice:
1. What do you need? Before you pick a lawyer or firm, you need to have some idea of what your legal needs are, in terms of practice areas, volume of work, and level of difficulty. For example, if you are starting up a small business, you would likely select a different firm than if you were forming a $100m venture capital fund. Similarly, if you need help with a one-off project, you might overlook certain considerations that won't affect you on the practical level.
2. Fees -- everyone wants reasonable rates. We want reasonable rates, yet we know that our JD partner billed out at over $300 per hour as a 5th year associate many years ago. Law is a profession; skill and efficiency are not guaranteed; you are much more likely to get what you pay for, or less. You'll seldom get more. Think about your own business and how you think about why your prices are justified. Lawyers bill by the hour because unless you're doing a cookie-cutter type of project (such as "file these pre-drafted forms" or "file our quickie divorce"), it's notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to accurately assess how much time a specific project will take. So fees are open-ended, and you will have to figure out what happens when the budget you set is going to bust. The only way that you will actually get a break on rates is by being accommodating on point #3, payment.
3. Payment -- most lawyers will ask for a retainer, which protects them from not getting paid because you change your mind after 20 hours of work, etc. (High legal costs are one reason for this; go figure.) Do not expect an experienced lawyer to waive a retainer for the "privilege" of getting your future business. There's no way to lock you up as a client and no real reason for the lawyer to take on the risk of your success. Also, don't expect any but the largest firms to waive or defer fees for start-ups. After the dotcom bust took out several Silicon Valley firms, those that remained learned their lessons. If you give a lawyer a pretty full-sized retainer, guaranteeing the lawyer that she'll get paid, many will give you a further break on fees. Finally, you should not generally worry about losing the money that you pay as a retainer: lawyers are generally required to keep your retainer in a special trust account so that it's available to you if it's not used for legal fees. Most states have a special program or insurance fund to compensate clients who lose funds from an attorney trust account.
Subject: Looking for good business attorney
I just started at a small XYZ firm/company and am looking for a referral to a good business attorney for general legal matters. We're looking for a good balance of local experience, expertise with small companies, and reasonable rates.
I just started at a small XYZ firm/company and am looking for a referral to a good business attorney for general legal matters. We're looking for a good balance of local experience, expertise with small companies, and reasonable rates.
Rather than continue to draft responses, we've decided to put most of our advice here so that folks can get much closer to what they're likely to want or need.
Some general advice:
1. What do you need? Before you pick a lawyer or firm, you need to have some idea of what your legal needs are, in terms of practice areas, volume of work, and level of difficulty. For example, if you are starting up a small business, you would likely select a different firm than if you were forming a $100m venture capital fund. Similarly, if you need help with a one-off project, you might overlook certain considerations that won't affect you on the practical level.
2. Fees -- everyone wants reasonable rates. We want reasonable rates, yet we know that our JD partner billed out at over $300 per hour as a 5th year associate many years ago. Law is a profession; skill and efficiency are not guaranteed; you are much more likely to get what you pay for, or less. You'll seldom get more. Think about your own business and how you think about why your prices are justified. Lawyers bill by the hour because unless you're doing a cookie-cutter type of project (such as "file these pre-drafted forms" or "file our quickie divorce"), it's notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to accurately assess how much time a specific project will take. So fees are open-ended, and you will have to figure out what happens when the budget you set is going to bust. The only way that you will actually get a break on rates is by being accommodating on point #3, payment.
3. Payment -- most lawyers will ask for a retainer, which protects them from not getting paid because you change your mind after 20 hours of work, etc. (High legal costs are one reason for this; go figure.) Do not expect an experienced lawyer to waive a retainer for the "privilege" of getting your future business. There's no way to lock you up as a client and no real reason for the lawyer to take on the risk of your success. Also, don't expect any but the largest firms to waive or defer fees for start-ups. After the dotcom bust took out several Silicon Valley firms, those that remained learned their lessons. If you give a lawyer a pretty full-sized retainer, guaranteeing the lawyer that she'll get paid, many will give you a further break on fees. Finally, you should not generally worry about losing the money that you pay as a retainer: lawyers are generally required to keep your retainer in a special trust account so that it's available to you if it's not used for legal fees. Most states have a special program or insurance fund to compensate clients who lose funds from an attorney trust account.
Have you thought more precisely about what legal needs you have? For example, you might very wisely select different folks to give you generic corporate advice (e.g., form of entity & structure), to create form agreements for use with customers, or to handle disputes. If you can give me some guidance about what you think you need, I can give you some different options.
In general, as you're evaluating other referrals you might get, we think that you'll want to stay away from a larger firm (anything over 20 lawyers) unless your business is already well beyond the "just-started small IT consulting firm" phase. You should probably aim for a group of under 10 lawyers, getting a corporate generalist to handle those matters and one litigator to write letters and advise you on disputes. (Note that you should expect not to actually litigate anything unless there's well over $50k at risk, since the costs of litigation are just too high.) What you want on that litigation front is good advice more than an available trial team. Finally, depending on your accountant, you may benefit from having a tax lawyer in the group to give you more high-value tax advice.
Labels: law
Sunday, December 23, 2007 :: posted by TSC team @ 8:36 PM
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