| Define what you expect from your attorney. If you tell your attorney to "do whatever you have to to make it be right so that I run no risk ", you are not only seeking what probably cannot be achieved (total lack of risk), but you are telling the attorney to be very thorough and extremely careful. This will normally mean more time spent doing your work and a bigger bill. Perfection is unattainable. You may get 90 percent certainty at an affordable cost, 95 percent certainty at a prohibitive cost, and if you try to move from 95 percent toward 100 percent, your cost escalates even further.
Limit the scope of review. If you give your attorney one of those 20 page leases, tiny print, rest assured that reading such a document is nearly as sleep inducing for your lawyer as it is for you. If you understand portions of the lease (and all leases contain information which is purely factual and requires no legal skill to interpret), tell the lawyer that you understand paragraphs (for example) 1, 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 17 and 23 and that you would like the lawyer to review the balance of the lease. This will reduce reading time and, since the prevailing standard for legal billing is time spent, the bill. Or tell your lawyer that you have reviewed the lease and feel relatively comfortable with it, but are still concerned about the circumstances where you might limit your liability under the lease - for example, by subleasing or assigning your interest in the lease.
This page is a work in progress. Watch for additional tips as time passes.
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