Springing to the Defense of Business Lawyers

“Lawyers kill deals.”

This is a familiar refrain often heard in the hallways of the business community. Whether you are listening to the chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 company or the owner of a restaurant negotiating a new lease, the jokes and comments about lawyers are often the same: negative.

Yes, if the number of lawyer jokes circulating is any indication, lawyers aren’t a popular breed. (Did you hear the one about the lawyers on the bus. . . .)

Why are business lawyers so unpopular? Are they really that bad or nasty? Businessmen and businesswomen don’t seem to like lawyers because lawyers supposedly too often say “no.” They tell you why you can’t attempt a proposed merger, why you can’t set your prices low enough to beat the competition, and what’s wrong with just about any proposed deal imaginable. Lawyers argue and pick at contract language, interpreting and reinterpreting what most may not even understand.

Part of the reason is that lawyers speak their own language of legalese, which adds to their problems, because other lawyers are often the only ones who can understand what they are so concerned about.

But the situation is more complicated. It has to do with the way lawyers are trained. In law school, students study cases about deals that have gone sour. They read court cases and discover that people who get along with each other don’t wind up in court. Lawsuits are filed because the parties couldn’t trust each other, wouldn’t talk to each other or refused to work out their dispute amicably.

So lawyers are trained to expect the worst--and plan for it. But that’s what makes them so valuable in the business community. They think about how a deal might fall apart when everyone else is rejoicing because a new partnership has been formed.

And when the deal does fall apart, as some inevitably do, having a good lawyer at your side at the beginning--with wise advice to help you plan the future of your business--is a lot better than having to find a tough trial lawyer to rescue your case when you find yourself dragged into a courtroom.

So let me come to the defense of business lawyers. The good ones, at least. They serve an important and valuable purpose. The nit-picking can pay off. All that legal language can come back to haunt you if you don’t have a legal counselor who understands what’s happening and what you, as a business person, are getting into.

A good lawyer doesn’t say “no.” A good lawyer says “yes, but,” and explains the legal risks. A good lawyer is able to tell you how to do something, within the law, and how to reduce the risks of litigation or other regulatory penalties. And a good lawyer is hard to find.