What should a CEO do if a business dispute arises, and he or she doesn’t have the luxury of an in-house legal department?
George Moscarino, partner at Cleveland-based Moscarino & Treu LLP, says CEOs need to look for certain characteristics in the attorney who will represent their company.
- Experience matters. Business owners should talk to other CEOs in their industry to get a recommendation of an attorney who has handled a case for them.
- In law we trust. “CEOs need to have a lawyer who is really looking out for their best interests and not the best interests of their billable hours and the profits of the law firm,” Moscarino says. “The best lawyers are the ones who get the best results for the least cost, who then get repeat business because they give good, solid counsel advice.”
- Set a meeting. Moscarino suggests calling a lawyer and asking to meet with him or her.
“If the lawyer doesn’t have the time to meet with them or talk to them on the phone, then maybe that’s somebody they just don’t want to hire,” he says. “You’ve got to be comfortable with your lawyer. You’ve got to be able to feel like he or she has your business interests in mind.”
- Form a partnership. “It really is a relationship between the client and the firm,” Moscarino says. “Hopefully clients won’t need their attorney all that often, but when they do, they need to know that when (a dispute arises), things will be dropped and their problem will be attended to.”
