It's better to plan than to respond

I recently had a meeting with a client who retained us to draft a Shareholder’s Agreement for her and the co-owner of her business. This type of an agreement lets the shareholder of a company control what happens in the event of certain things such as change in ownership, death of a shareholder or the divorce of a shareholder.

Some of the items she easily had an opinion on, however, some items she said “let’s leave those out and we’ll deal with them later.” I encouraged her not to do that, rather than to tackle the hard issues head on and while that advice was with respect to her particular situation, the advice that follows applies to all business issues, not just legal ones.

It is better to plan for something than to respond to it happening.

From a legal point of view, it costs far less to draft a legal agreement that sets out what will happen if an event takes place as opposed to litigating the issue when it happens and there is no agreement in place. This applies to employment agreements, contracts with customers and suppliers. Litigation dollars are easily ten times the amount of dollars spent on drafting documents: use your legal fees wisely, plan ahead.

From a general business point of view, facing the possibility of an unpleasant event head on, let’s you plan how to deal with it before you are in “crisis mode” and struggling to deal with shock as well as coming up with a plan.

Plan your response before you need it. We can help with that.

Inga B. Andriessen JD