In the Old West, nobody paid a gunfighter by the bullet. You paid him to solve a problem, and the fewer shots it took, the better he was at his job.
A town that hired help wanted the trouble gone. They didn’t care how many hours he spent cleaning his rifle or how many rounds he fired into the hillside.
They cared whether the problem was solved, and whether it stayed solved.
This idea comes from Westerns like The Magnificent Seven, but it was also on a sign that hung on the wall at a firm I worked at for years.
It struck me that people who do their job well don’t push extra cost and stress back onto their client. I walked past that sign many times, and the longer I practiced, the more sense it made.
A good mechanic doesn’t charge you more because a repair took him longer than it should have. A good contractor doesn’t bill you for his own mistakes.
In most trades, being good at your job means getting it right the first time.
Somewhere along the way, the legal profession forgot that lesson.
Billing by the hour rewards the lawyer who takes the longest, not the one who protects you best.
Although lawyers are trained to be very effective, they are often not efficient. It’s a lesson I am glad to have learned early in my career, and it has served me well.
Think about what the billable hour asks a business owner to do.
You have a quick question, and you wonder whether it’s worth the charge to pick up the phone. You put off having a contract reviewed because you aren’t sure what the bill will look like. You wait until a problem is big enough to justify the cost, and by then it usually costs a great deal more.
The billing model itself teaches clients to call their lawyer too late. Effective means getting the right answer. Efficient means getting it without wasting the client’s time or money along the way.
A business deserves both.
There’s a better model, and more businesses are starting to demand it.
Business leaders already know how to buy value. They pay for results from their financial advisors, their consultants, and their technology partners, and they expect a predictable cost and a clear outcome.
More of them are asking why legal counsel should work any differently, and it’s a fair question.
When I started Business Legal Management over 10 years ago, that was part of my goal: to maximize efficiency with effectiveness, and not charge for every single bullet to do so.
For us, that means acting less like an outside firm you call in an emergency and more like a member of your leadership team.
We work with companies that have grown too large to handle legal questions on their own but haven’t yet brought on a full-time general counsel. We get to know the business, look for risks before they become problems, and keep costs predictable so no one has to hesitate before picking up the phone.
The goal is the same one that the sign on the wall described: solve the problem with as few shots as possible, and leave the client better off than we found them.
This is just a short introduction to what we do, but I hope it will spark more conversation and curiosity about what else might be possible in the business and legal world that we aren’t yet considering.
Many of the leaders in this community built their companies by questioning the way things have always been done. I’d like to see that same thinking applied to legal services, and I suspect many of you have ideas we haven’t heard yet.
Connecting Business Legal Management with C-Suite Network has been a long time coming, and we’re eager to finally get involved in the community.
My partners and I have a combined 150+ years of legal and business experience, and we believe it can continue to benefit others.
That experience comes from deals that closed and deals that fell apart, from disputes that were avoided and some that weren’t, and from watching businesses of every size face the same challenges again and again.
Experience like that isn’t worth much if it stays locked away. It’s meant to be passed on.
Despite over half a lifetime of experience, I’m just not ready to retire.
In fact, I can’t. There’s too much to share.
I stay involved, stay learning, and stay trying to find the best way to use my experience in a way that will give back, because I believe that we, like the rest of the universe, are built to share with each other.
I hope we will get the chance to connect with more Hero Club members in the coming year. If we meet you in Dallas, please don’t hesitate to share with us what other valuable things we can do with our experience and expertise.
And if you’re curious where your own company stands, start with one question: if a legal problem were heading your way right now, would anyone on your team see it coming? Our free Business Legal Rating at businesslegalrating.com is a simple place to start.
For fellow Hero Club members, we’d also like to offer a complimentary review of your rating results. It’s a chance to talk through next steps and potential pitfalls, with no commitment required.
We’d love to hear what matters most to you, and what really brings peace of mind in business. We hope to see you soon.
