When to Hire a Lawyer

I've been debating this issue for a little while now. I'm a very frugal person, so the idea of hiring someone to fill out paperwork or something similar is just about beyond my scope. However, I've learned that everyone should have access to a lawyer and certainly every business should have access to one. Frugal or not, sometimes it's cheaper to let someone else handle the legalities. Let me just share an example or two of why this is so.

I have very little problems with payments from clients. Every now and then I may have to send a reminder. Every now and then I have to send multiple emails. This doesn't happen very often, but when it does I probably waste more time trying to get paid for the work I did than actually doing the work. Even though I'm not spending cash out of pocket, it still costs me because it wastes my time.

And then there are the completely non-paying clients. I've only had one of those. I stopped writing until I got payment, which means I pretty much stopped writing for her altogether. Apparently she was doing the same thing to other writers, who lost untold amounts of cash. How much energy do you have to waste getting payments?

Sometimes you are better off to hire a lawyer than to waste your time. You see, a lawyer has the time to do the research and learn that someone like this has scammed plenty of writers. What's next? Because the lawyer had time, the issue got presented with a lot more merit. I mean there is a huge difference between one person taking you to court for a bill and mulitple people getting involved in a class action lawsuit.

And then there are issues with insurance, and in my case, things like real estate. I don't know the first thing about transferring a deed. But my lawyer does. See, I could spend days working on that stuff to make sure I do it right. But if I charge $20 an hour and my lawyer charges $100, it's worth it to let my lawyer spend 2 hours working on something he is familiar with instead of me spending all week trying to make sure I've got it right.