I was recently talking to a client. I said I was going to start blogging and wanted to know if there any topics he thought would be interesting. I assumed he would want to know about some fascinating aspect of the law, such as confidentiality agreements. What he said is that what he is currently working on is finding working relationships with the right company to assist his business. What does that have to do with a lawyer? Plenty, actually. First, a corporate lawyer can help the client in drafting an agreement setting up the relationship, whether it is a joint venture, an independent contractor or anything of the sort.
But there is a second value add and that is what I call the law of the rolodex. For those of you who are too young, the rolodex is something that, back in the day, everyone had on their desk. This was your contact list. My view is that when I made a contact it increased my contacts by not only the new person, but all of their contacts. This is something that is useful today. If you are a business and have a need to locate another type of business, it makes sense to cal your lawyer. Since this is not case related, you should not be getting billed. And the fact is that business lawyers, by the nature of their practice, know a great many people.
By the way, this works both ways. Recently I was preparing to meet a potential new client. I wanted to go in with some potential business for this person. I called one of my clients to see if they knew of anyone who might want to use the service of the potential new client. As it turned out, my existing client had the need. I went into the meeting armed with potential business for this new client. I ended up with a new client, the new client ended up with new business and the old client ended up with something they needed.
Robert M. Bovarnick, Esquire
