What makes you love or hate your lawyer?

Question

As you can see in my profile, I am an attorney based in Columbus, OH. I joined Bigger Pockets because I am personally interested in real estate investing, and I also want to learn how I can better serve the needs of my real estate investor clients. From your experiences, what makes or breaks your relationship with a lawyer?

Robert Ellis · Answer

John, from the clients we work with I think it's knowledge and communication. A lot of clients we work with are new to columbus but have plenty of borrowing power and a lot of money to put to work.

Some of the common questions that we answer is always related to financing and LLCs, whether to put properties into an LLC for partnerships or not. There are many personal and financial tradeoffs to each. For example, residential lenders from my experience don't lend to LLCs, so you get less favorable terms than if you kept it in your personal name. I think an attorney who can help clear the air about options and tradeoffs to both and help educate them with also a general knowledge of real estate is what all of our clients look for.

Also someone who can recommend someone to another attorney if they don't do that kind of law, or even someone within their firm. I have one attorney that does evictions all day long but he can't do condo documents to convert multifamily to condominium projects. We have some attorneys that specialize in zoning and variance and don't do either of the above.

I think an attorney with a great background who can also be a one stop shop for advice or referrals is always preferred. That helps alleviate the burden from the investor that you are working with.

Jason Hirko · Answer

@John Bauer Simple things - for example, whenever I send a purchase agreement to my attorney, he adds in all the pertinent dates to his calendar, so the day my money goes hard or an option expires, or I have to get a document to the other party, I get a call from his secretary... AND he doesn't add it to billable hours...