In the world today, every little thing you do has to be in accordance with the laws in your state or nation. This includes things at a personal, as well as a commercial standpoint. However, there are too many laws that govern different countries and states and knowing or understanding all of them could take years. This is why lawyers and other legal professionals go to school for years to gain knowledge and understanding and experience in the various fields of law.
And did you know that lawyers are amongst the highest paid professionals? This is probably due to the many years of toil they spend studying the profession and developing the career, not mentioning the costs they incur before they become fully practicing legal professionals. And even then, some choose to not become practicing lawyers and instead start their own legal consulting ventures, which brings us to the main agenda of this article. What do legal consultants do and how do they make money? Here are some insights on how legal consulting generates income.
Who is a legal consultant?
A legal consultant is basically a professional who provides legal advice to individuals and business organizations. More often than not, they have the same training as practicing attorneys, only their services are primarily out of the courtroom. The main work of a legal consultant is to ensure that you’re well versed and remain on the right side of the law when it comes to compliance as well as legal obligations and other issues. They may also assist with drafting documents such as business contracts, employment agreements, and any other documents that need to be legally binding. They also assist with investigations in legal matters that affect their clients.
Lastly, just like practicing lawyers, legal consultants specialize in certain fields of the law, say property tax, real estate, corporate law, commercial law, and financial law, just to name a few. Working with a legal consultant can be a good way to ensure you stay within the law in your operations to minimize or prevent legal action from being placed against your company or organization.
According to a recent article published on HuffPost by Larry Alton, a renowned journalist, columnist, and CEO of Alton Enterprises, modern legal professionals are doing better as consultants. It so happens that the career is less demanding than practicing law and more often than not, legal consultants spend most of their time in offices or in the field, meeting and providing legal advice to their clients. Nonetheless, the demand for their services has been seen to be rising in different places and sometimes they have to work more than 40 hours weekly to meet their clients’ demands. But the question still remains, how does legal consulting generate income? Here are some services that they provide their clients.
Providing legal advice to clients who face legal issues
In the course of running a business, situations that need legal advice often arise. Legal consultants use their legal expertise to help businesses that are faced with such legal issues to solve them on an advisory basis. With their legal knowledge and expertise, a legal consultant can identify aspects that can throw a business on the wrong side of the law and also provide insights that can help to prevent such or similar issues in the future. This is, of course, dependent on the particular issue and the field in which the particular legal consultant you approach specializes in. For instance, the consultant can investigate a company’s dealings, documents, and practices and provide advice to ensure that they do not violate certain laws such as financial and labor laws. Of course, they can make money out of these services on a contractual basis, even though some of them charge an hourly rate.
Creating essential documents for businesses
As earlier hinted, legal consulting professionals also help businesses in the preparation of certain legal documents, some of which may include policies, contracts, and handbooks, just to name a few. In some cases, the consultant may also handle legal communications where the business is dealing with another party. A good example is when two businesses are negotiating a merger, in which case the consultant can act as a business representative and communicate directly with the other company’s representative, who may also be a consultant or a lawyer.
Assisting law firms
Another common way legal consulting businesses generate income is through assisting practicing attorneys or law firms with their cases and other legal issues. For instance, when a certain law firm is struggling with a particular case, they may hire a legal consultant to assist with certain aspects such as investigations, assessing and analyzing documents or even looking for witnesses. In personal injury and car accident cases, for instance, a law firm may decide to appoint a legal consultant to find out why a client’s personal injury or accident claim has been denied by the insurance company in question. Well, this is mostly because lots of reports and pieces of evidence are required to file or represent cases like these and get the client (victim of the accident) adequately compensated, which requires utmost legal expertise in the team working on them.
In some cases, they assist law firms (especially startups) with creating business plans, streamlining office procedures, training their staff in various departments, and even improving client recruitment. In a nutshell, legal consultants can help attorneys and law firms in the following ways:
- Case management
- Streamlining office procedures
- Creating business plans
- Training law firm staff
Nonetheless, to advise law firms, the consultant has to have many years of experience in a particular field of law. In most cases, legal consultants who are hired by law firms have at some point been lawyers themselves and they have a good reputation on their belts.
Benefits of legal consultancy
As earlier suggested, a good number of lawyers leave their law firms to get into legal consultancy. This is mostly due to the various attractive benefits you can get as a legal consultant. Some of these may include:
- A higher income – while this may be a debatable statement, legal consultants have a huge potential to earn more income compared to working in a law firm.
- Less startup capital – compared to starting a law firm, starting a career as a legal consultant doesn’t require you to spend an arm and a leg in the injection of capital. You can simply start by marketing yourself as a freelancer and build your practice gradually.
- Control – with legal consultancy, you have the freedom to choose the cases you find interesting, the clients you feel comfortable working with and responsibilities you’d like to take on. Working at a law firm may not give you this much control, especially if it’s not your own firm.
- Flexibility – with legal consulting, you can choose your preferred work environment, set up your own objectives, and in addition to this, set up your own flexible schedule. You can even work from home, with the freedom to reduce or increase your workload to suit your current abilities and needs.
Legal consulting is increasingly becoming a lucrative business. In addition to having a higher potential to earn more, legal consultants have more control, are more flexible, and do not require much capital to start and operate. Some of their clients are individuals, business organizations, and even well-established law firms who need legal advice on particular matters or legal issues. The above are just some of the various ways you can make money by venturing into legal consulting.
