Can I Save Money by Preparing a Contract for My Lawyer to Review?

This post is inspired by a Quora question that I answered. Q. Can I save money by preparing a contract for my lawyer to review?

A. No. Here is an explanation of why not.

Clients sometimes think that if they do the work to prepare the first draft of an agreement, they can save money because a lawyer will need less time to complete the agreement.

That is not true!

• On just a few occasions has a client drafted an agreement for my review.
• Only once (for a set of online terms of service) did it take me about the same amount of time (thus money) to review and fix the agreement as it would have taken for me to prepare the agreement myself.
• Every other time, it took me much longer to review and fix the client’s agreement than it would have to prepare the agreement myself, based on work I had done for other clients. The client did not save money – it lost money!

Stop and think about this for a moment: Will I be more efficient starting with something I have prepared for another client, or starting with something a non-lawyer has prepared?

I trust that the answer is obvious.

Dana H. Shultz, Attorney at Law  +1 510 547-0545  dana [at] danashultz [dot] com
This blog does not provide legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. If you need legal advice, please contact a lawyer directly.