Finding Lawyers to Review or Negotiate Your Lease

In all but the simplest deals, it's a good idea to hire an experienced real estate lawyer to help you negotiate your commercial lease. Even if you don't hire an attorney to negotiate your lease, you should seriously consider having a lawyer review your lease before you sign and bind yourself to the terms of the commercial lease.

In this article, we'll look at how to search for a commercial lease lawyer. In our article on hiring a lawyer to negotiate your lease, we'll focus on how to assess a prospective lawyer and what you can expect from their services.

Why Should You Hire a Commercial Lease Lawyer?

While you might understand the meaning and significance of the clauses in the landlord's lease, there's no substitute for a thorough legal analysis of the particular lease your landlord has handed to you. While it's true that hiring a lawyer will add expense and perhaps time to your lease negotiations, in the long run, it can be worth it.

Here are some of the important things a good lawyer can do for you:

• Spot subtle (or even not so subtle) variations on a lease clause you're familiar with, and explain its meaning to you.
• Warn you of hidden problems (or windfalls) in the lease that aren't obvious to the unprofessional eye.
• Act as a valuable partner during the sometimes hairy process of hammering out a lease.
• Suggest specific, legally appropriate wording to replace what the landlord has used.
• Help as a buffer between you and the landlord, enabling you to say, "I'm sorry but my lawyer insists on these changes!"

As you would with any service provider, you should take the time to find the right commercial lease lawyer.

Finding Lawyers for Your Commercial Lease

Most lawyers who don't specialize in real estate have only limited experience in landlord-tenant legal issues—and even those with some experience might know only about residential tenancies. So if you just pick a name out of a registry of real estate attorneys or go to the lawyer who prepared your will, you might wind up with someone less than ideal for handling commercial lease issues.

Your best bet is to find a lawyer who regularly represents small businesses. These lawyers are used to working with commercial leases and the problems that come with them. They understand the ins and outs of business tenancies and can often suggest effective strategies that general practitioners or specialists in other fields don't know about.

It's a good idea to find a lawyer early in the life of your business. Even if you're a committed self-help type who does loads of things on your own, you're likely to need legal services from time to time. Someone who already knows your business plan, personal goals, finances, and everything else about your business will have essential background information when you come in with a legal problem. If an issue requires more specialized expertise than your lawyer possesses—you could need advice on a trademark question, for example—your lawyer can refer you to a specialist.

Compile a List of Prospects

Don't expect to locate a good business lawyer by simply consulting a law directory or reading an advertisement. You don't have enough information in most of these sources to help you make a valid judgment.

Lawyer advertising services operated by bar associations or commercial websites are almost useless, at least initially. Usually, these services make little attempt to evaluate a lawyer's skill and experience. They simply list the names of lawyers who have signed on with the service, often accepting the lawyer's self-serving assessment of skills and experience.

Fortunately, there are some better sources, and some ways to use advertising services, that can result in informed choices.

People in your community who own or operate excellent businesses. These people obviously understand quality in other ways, so why not in lawyers? Ask other businesspeople who and how good their lawyer is. Ask about other lawyers they've used and what led them to make a change. If you talk to half a dozen businesspeople, chances are you'll come away with several good leads.

People who provide services to the business community. Speak to your banker, accountant, insurance agent, and real estate broker. These people frequently deal with lawyers who represent business clients and are in a position to make informed judgments.

People with businesses like your own. In some specialized businesses—software design, restaurants, landscape nurseries—it can pay to work with a lawyer who regularly represents clients in that area. Besides being familiar with the way the enterprise operates, this specialist should have experience with the types of legal problems common to the business. Sometimes specialists charge a little more, but if their unique information is truly valuable, it can be money well spent. Trade associations are often a good place to get referrals to specialists.

Other tenants in your new building. Your neighbors might have used a lawyer in their dealings with your landlord and have come away feeling they were in good hands. You'll get the benefit of the lawyer's experience with this building and this landlord.

Online Legal Advertisers

Many websites cater to lawyers eager to capture would-be clients who are using the internet to find legal answers and/or to look for lawyers. These sites are fundamentally no different than their old-style, "Yellow Pages" counterparts—they make no promises regarding the quality of the representation. Many will check to make sure that the lawyer is in good standing with the state bar licensing agency, but they typically don't do more than that.

Online legal advertising works one of two ways:

1. The site might simply list lawyers in your locale and in the specialty you need; you browse their self-written profiles and contact the ones you'd like to speak with.
2. Alternatively, like on Nolo, you type a legal question in a search box and receive answers from a few lawyers. You can choose to read more about the lawyers, and, depending on what you learn, decide from there whether to go further.

If you use an internet advertising site to find a lawyer, you can still winnow out the ones who aren't appropriate for your situation.

Next Steps After Finding a Lawyer for Your Lease

After collecting names (or obtaining an answer from a lawyer who responds to your question), you'll need to vet the attorneys. You can start by looking at their reviews. If a friend referred you to the attorney, you should still do your due diligence and look at others' reviews to make sure this attorney provides a consistently good experience.

If you've narrowed it down to just one to three options, you can meet with the attorneys. Most attorneys provide a free consultation. At this consultation, you can get a good idea of how their office works, the lawyer's experience, and their fees. After all your research, you should be able to find an experienced attorney who can help you with your lease.