I realize that a lot has happened before I started blogging in my quest to start this company. One of the major decisions was finding a lawyer. I knew nothing about this, at all. In fact, I have the same general nervousness about lawyers that I have about other people in positions that I have to rely on but know nothing about what they do (mechanics, accountants, to name a couple others...). So I asked around for recommendations, people who had just looked for lawyers for themselves, people who do kind of what I do and who already had lawyers. They sent me specific names, law firms, etc., but in the end I wanted my own lawyer. Here were my criteria:
- I wanted a shark: someone who would advocate and fight for me, an offensive player as opposed to a defensive player
- I wanted a weasel: not a snake, but someone who knows the law well enough to use it to my advantage should the situation arise that I need that
Another piece of advice that I got was to try to find someone my own age, someone I could possibly socialize with, and who might not charge me for every minute long conversation. I liked this suggestion, because I'm definitely in networking mode lately.
How did I find my sharkweasel? I went to several big law firms' websites and I searched for lawyers based on the criteria that I was looking for: business law, tax law, intellectual property law, and venture capital.
A funny thing about lawyers, and law firm websites. They have pictures of all of their lawyers. So I looked through the pictures of the lawyers that matched my criteria. One of the firms had an office close to where I live, which I thought was great. I pulled up the photo of the closest match at that office, and I must admit, I knew right away he was my sharkweasel. I didn't want to get too excited, I needed to interview him, talk to him about what I'm trying to do, etc., but after our first meeting, I was sold. He even gets my sense of humor, in a lawyerly way, of course.
I'm just hoping that he doesn't mind when he finds out someday that I call him a sharkweasel...
