How to Get Good Business Advice Without Hiring High-Priced Consultants

Your business makes money by taking risks. The bigger the risk, the bigger the potential payoff—but the potential loss is greater as well. It’s your job to decide what risks are worth taking.

Identifying the potential risks associated with business opportunities is important. But how can you get good advice without hiring high-priced consultants like McKinsey & Company? Talking with your lawyer is a good place to start.

Lawyers are trained to help their clients identify risks. The typical final exam in law school is called an “issue spotter.” The professor gives the class a story that can go on for several pages and asks everyone to discuss the legal issues they identify while reading it. The point is not to see if the students can correctly analyze the legal issues (although that certainly will help their grades), it is to see if the budding lawyers can identify the many issues that may arise.

Further, unless you are a hot-dog vendor whose lawyer limits his practice to representing hot-dog vendors, your lawyer will be able to draw on his experience with other clients to help you. A good lawyer can draw lessons that can be applied to your business, no matter what it is, from what he learned from working with other clients.

When you discuss your company’s business opportunities with your lawyer, he will be issue spotting as he listens. The issues that your lawyer identifies will include many of the risks associated with the decision you face. You may have spotted many of them on your own. But the issues that your lawyer identifies that you did not could tip the scales for your decision.