LLC & Partnership Agreement - Attorney's Advice vs. DIY

[Matthew Bonaski]

Hello BP community,

My business partner and I are starting a rental property business and plan to invest out-of-state. We're in the process of setting up our LLC and drafted a partnership agreement ourselves to outline our roles, responsibilities, and profit splits.

I recently spoke with a real estate attorney who said our "partnership agreement" is actually an operating agreement and that a proper, sound agreement would be 70+ pages. He also offered to create the LLC for us and provide additional legal support. The total cost is not unreasonable, but I am questioning if it's all truly needed.

To give you a better idea, he has a few packages available that scale up in price and services:

• Bronze ($497): Includes LLC formation, a custom operating agreement, and a year of statutory agent service.
• Silver ($897): Adds the EIN, an LLC operations manual, and some ongoing compliance/task alerts.
• Gold ($1,397): The most comprehensive package, which includes a revocable living trust to keep our names off public records for privacy/asset protection.

The 70+ page estimate came as a surprise, and it makes me question if this is a standard requirement for a new partnership.

I'm hoping to get some insight from those of you who have created similar partnerships:

• 1) Is this a normal process? Did you use an attorney to draft a comprehensive 70+ page operating agreement and set up your LLC?
• 2) Or were you able to do most of this work yourselves? For those who went the DIY route, how did you ensure your partnership/operating agreement was sound and covered all the necessary bases?
• 3) Does it make sense for us to be doing this as step one? Obviously, we'd rather direct the funds to purchasing a house, so if it doesn't make sense to do this at this point, but a little bit further down the line, we'd like to know. We are having a bit of beginner's confusion as to the proper 'order of operations' and what should come first/second/third, etc.

Any advice or shared experiences would be incredibly helpful as we decide on our next steps.

Thanks in advance