How To Choose An Attorney For Your Power...

attorney Lawyers, lawsuits, litigations, hearings, trials, courtrooms…

All those terms are enough to send chills up your spine.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you had a frivolous lawsuit come your way? (Or even a not-so-frivolous lawsuit?)

It’s a question most all real estate investors ask…

What can you do to keep yourself and your business, protected?

Better to know this sooner rather than later.

Hey Moguls—it’s Cody Sperber here, and I’m addressing this serious issue of having good legal protection. You want to make sure you have a quality real estate attorney as a strong member of your power team.

Why You Need an Attorney

If you haven’t noticed that we’ve evolved into a highly litigious society, either you just flew in from Mars, or you’ve been living under a rock. It seems everyone and their uncle is out to sue someone else.

It’s crazy.

If that weren’t enough, there’s also the fact that different states have different laws when it comes to matters involving real estate. This means that your legal documents must be state-specific. The best way to protect yourself in this area is to have an investor-friendly, real estate attorney review all your documents.

With just these matters alone, I think you can see why an experienced attorney is crucial for your business.

Investor-Friendly Attorney

You notice that I included the term investor-friendly when describing the attorney that you will be looking for…

Why is that important?

Because you’ll be involved in creative deals and creative financing methods that are not common to ordinary real estate transactions.

When you’re looking for the attorney for your team, here are a few necessary requirements. This attorney must:

Specialize in real estate law
Understand the local foreclosure process
Affordably review and create documents
Be knowledgeable about asset protection

Where Do You Find an Investor-Friendly Attorney?

Begin looking for this member of your power team at your local REIA club meeting. Ask around for names of attorneys that other investors use.

judge In addition, look at the ads in your club newsletter. This is a great place for an investor-friendly attorney to place an ad.

Once you have a few names, it’s time to do a little detective work. Go to your local courthouse and ask the clerk to help you locate cases in which your prospects have been involved. What was the outcome? Did they win or lose? Wouldn’t you rather work with a winner?

This research will allow you to weed out the undesirables. With the names that remain on your list, it’s time to schedule a face-to-face interview.

The Interview Process

Interviewing your candidates will be a time investment but will be well worth it. Ask questions to learn if they’re familiar with the creative side of real estate investing. The team member you select must be a good listener. This interview will be a good test of that skill.

Below are a few suggested questions you might ask during the interview:

What percentage of your practice has to do with real estate?

(You’re looking for someone with 30%-50% of their business dedicated to real estate. Additionally, you want someone with at least 5 years of real estate law. Otherwise, they will not make the grade for your power team.)
Ask them for names of clients who are real estate investors. Then ask for permission to contact them as references. What they have to say will be of great interest to you.
Ask to see their fees chart.

(You’ll want to know right up front how to budget the expense of your attorney’s fees.)

Services Your Attorney Will Render

Services for which your attorney will be responsible might include:

Creating documents
Reviewing complicated transactional paperwork
Informing you about local real estate laws (especially if there are recent changes)
Teaching you about the local foreclosure process
Evicting non-paying tenants

lawyer Keep in mind that attorney fees must be affordable for your budget. An attorney’s average per-hour fee will run about $150. But they can run all the way up to $300 an hour. (An excellent attorney can demand those higher fees.)

Your power-team attorney should create for you a standard contract package at an affordable price.

This last point is one that many investors overlook, and that is asset protection. This might include setting up legal entities such as land trusts and personal property trusts.

Bottom Line

While you do not need to know all the details of real estate law, you must have a reliable attorney who does know! As a word of caution, don’t wait to get this team member on board.

The key is to have this member in place before the need arises! You want to be comfortable in the knowledge that all your documents are accurate, up to date and state-specific.

All those terms I listed at the outset don’t have to be scary for you when you have a trusted, investor-friendly attorney at your beck and call.

Don’t wait. Get this person on your team ASAP!

Do You Have a Scary Lawsuit Story?

I once heard a seasoned investor say that if you haven’t had a lawsuit thrown at you, it just means you haven’t been in the business long enough. Have you walked down this road? What did you change to protect yourself and your business going forward? We want to hear about it.