The Most Expensive Cheap Lawyer in Town

 

There is an old lawyer saying: The most expensive legal document you'll ever own is the one you prepared yourself to save attorney fees.

Every lawyer has a collection of horror stories that begin with: "We figured we'd save some money and do it ourselves."

And they usually end with: "How much will it cost to fix this?"

Here are a few classics.

"Can You Just Look This Over?"

Client: "We drafted this ourselves. Can you look at it and tell us if it's OK?"

Lawyer: "Not exactly."

People often assume a lawyer can bless a document with a quick glance. The problem is that if a lawyer says, "Looks fine," and a hidden problem appears later, guess who gets blamed?  By the time a lawyer has reviewed it thoroughly enough to be comfortable, he could have drafted it himself.

Think of it as asking a mechanic to guarantee a used car after looking at it from across the parking lot.

The $2,000 Savings That Cost $200,000

Client: "My wife and I wrote our own separation agreement. Saved us $2,000 in attorney fees."

Lawyer: "Excellent. Unfortunately, you also gave away half of your inherited lake property."

Inherited property is often protected by law as separate property. But one poorly written sentence in a homemade agreement can turn a protected asset into marital property.

Savings: $2,000.

Cost of the mistake: roughly $200,000.

Math can be cruel.

The Internet Will

Child: "Mom wrote her own will before she died."

Those words cause experienced probate lawyers to sit up straighter.

The homemade will often:

• leaves property to a minor child,
• forgets to name an executor,
• fails to grant basic powers,
• contains contradictory instructions, or
• borrows language from three different internet forms.

The result is often a court proceeding to determine what Mom meant.

The will was free.

The interpretation isn't.

The Magic Deed from the Internet

Somebody downloads a deed form, changes a few names, signs it, and records it.

Years later, a buyer, lender, or title company discovers the description is wrong or the transfer language doesn't do what everyone thought it did.

Nothing ruins a real estate closing quite like the phrase:

"We may need a corrective deed."

Translation: lawyers are about to become involved.

The Power of Attorney With No Power

A family downloads a power of attorney form online.

Years later, Mom develops dementia and the family takes the document to the bank.

The bank reviews it and says:

"No."

Now the family may need a guardianship or conservatorship proceeding that costs many times more than having the document prepared correctly in the first place.

The Business Agreement Between Best Friends

Two friends start a business using a free online form.

Everything works perfectly until they have money.

Or a disagreement.

Or both.

The agreement never answers the questions that suddenly matter:

• Who owns what?
• Who gets to make decisions?
• Can one owner force a sale?
• What happens if someone dies?

The document worked beautifully right up to the moment it was needed.

The Moral of the Story

This isn't to say every legal problem requires a lawyer. Some don't.

But people often compare an attorney's fee to the cost of doing it themselves. That's the wrong comparison.

The real comparison is between the attorney's fee and the cost of fixing a mistake.

Every experienced lawyer has seen a client save $500, $1,000, or $2,000 on the front end and spend ten or twenty times that amount cleaning up the mess later.

As I've observed over the past half-century, nobody walks into my office proudly carrying a homemade legal document that worked perfectly.

The ones that worked perfectly never come in.

The ones that come in are why I have a job.