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Why Founders Don’t Trust Startup Lawyers

“We received a term sheet from a competing VC syndicate, and if I go to our current lawyers, our existing investors will find out about it before I want them to.  Our law firm does a lot of work for our VCs.”

“Our VCs told us that if we used their preferred law firm, they’d close more quickly and even save us money by not hiring their own lawyers. But if we went with another firm, there ‘could be delays.'” 

“I went to my Board to disclose this highly confidential issue that only our lawyers and I knew about, and I realized that our VCs were already aware of it. No one but our lawyers could’ve disclosed it.”

“The lawyers that our investors connected us to said that the valuation in our term sheet was about market. It was only after closing that I found out we got totally hosed.”

The above are quotes or paraphrases of statements that we, as a firm, have heard directly from founders/executives as they explain their reasons for changing law firms. The unifying theme should be obvious, and it relates to the broader issue of why so many founders have such dim views of startup lawyers in general. In short, by playing fast and loose with conflicts of interest in the pursuit of maximizing short-term revenue, many startup lawyers and law firms have squandered their most valuable currency: trust.

Related Reading: How Founders Lose Control of Their Startups

What is Counsel?

No one who reads SHL or interacts with E/N’s tech practice would argue that our approach to the practice of law is “old school” in any sense of the term. The significant drivers of our growth include rethinking major facets of law practice, including organizational structure, compensation models, project management and technology adoption. However, while I am very much a tinkerer with respect to the delivery of legal services, I am quite old-school in my view of what lawyers fundamentally are, or at least should be: trusted counsel.

In a heated, high-stakes lawsuit or investigation, virtually everything you’ve ever said in writing to investors, to other executives, to friends and family, can be forced out into the open for everyone to review except for confidential communications with the Company’s lawyers (attorney-client privilege).  Take a moment to let that sink in. Nothing that you ever do or say as a company is more secure from forced disclosure than what you say to your lawyers.  That is, of course, unless the lawyers themselves disclose it.

Ask many founders whether they really trust the lawyers representing their company, and some will flat out say that, to them, their lawyers are just subject-matter experts there to paper deals and ensure the company doesn’t blow up from legal issues; highly-educated paper pushers and fire extinguishers.  Others will say that they do trust (in a sense) their lawyers, but when pushed into a serious, high-stakes situation in which total objectivity and confidence is paramount, the reality of their superficial relationship will surface.

  • Is the valuation they’re offering appropriate for our company, geography, and market?
  • Is this provision dangerous? Is it standard?
  • Some local people are pushing us to X accelerator, but we’re not sure it’s right for us. What should we do?
  • We need to make a major strategic shift that some of our stakeholders will want to block – what are our options?
  • My company is going under if I don’t get this deal done, but X investor says he will block it. Can he? What are my options?
  • We just got an acquisition offer, and I’m not sure whether it’s fair to me and my management team. What should we do?
  • One of our senior executives just got arrested. No one can find out about this until we know more. What do we do?

These are just a few of the kinds of questions that trusted counsel gets asked.  But trust, particularly the kind of trust we’re talking about here, carries a high price tag: independence and objectivity.  How can you trust my opinion about whether an acquisition offer is fair to the Company if the investors pushing you to sell have me on speed dial, and just sent me an invitation to their pool party? How can you trust me to give an honest assessment of a term sheet, or even a comparison of one term sheet v. another, if I’ve closed 20 deals for the VCs who submitted one of those term sheets, and have 3 more in the works? You are one deal. They are 25. Lawyers aren’t that bad at math.

Let’s be real: you can’t. Not possible. Founders know it, and in a world in which so many lawyers have given into the incestuous biz dev practice of playing both sides of the VC table, the result is a deep cynicism toward startup lawyers. Do I choose X firm or Y firm? Whatever. They’re all the same. I’ll just go with the cheaper one, or whatever one makes closing my financing easier. Some lawyers who regularly represent startups have even strategically made VC fund formation a core component of their firm. Smooth.

What “Alignment” Really Means

To the majority of lawyers (outside of the startup space) and investors (outside of the startup space), the above views are totally uncontroversial.  Make sure your own lawyers are independent and objective? Umm, yeah, thanks Captain Obvious. And even within the smaller sphere of startup/VC work, I know several investors and lawyers who draw a hard, ethical line to ensure that their reputation is not muddied in the pursuit of short-term revenue. If their investor-client is investing in a startup, they don’t shimmy over to the other side of the table with a smile on their face and a conflict waiver in-hand. They insist that the startup get their own lawyers. Trusted counsel.

But then there are the other people. “Deals get done faster” – “Startups save money on legal fees” – and (my favorite) “We’re all really aligned here, so why do we need two sets of lawyers?” Seriously?

I like to take complex issues and distill them into very simple statements totally free of B.S., so here’s one for you: when someone buys your startup for $200MM, there’s ultimately two places that money can go: in your pocket (and of your co-founders, team, etc.), or the pocket of your investors.

What was that about “alignment” again? And to be clear, the price tag gets negotiated in the acquisition, but guess where the % distribution between Pocket A and Pocket B gets largely negotiated? Financings. 1% of $200MM is $2 million.  So you’re negotiating whether millions of dollars in an exit will go into founders’ pockets or VCs pockets, and you’re telling founders they should just use the VC’s lawyers to close the round – because it saves maybe $10-20K in legal fees? Right. Thanks for ‘looking out’ on the legal budget.

Founders and their investors have shared interests in building a highly successful, profitable company. That much is doubtlessly true. But anyone who uses “alignment” as a justification for founders not worrying about the independence of their company’s lawyers is either (a) totally lying or (b) laughably lacking in even a basic understanding of human nature. 

This is not to say at all that founder-investor relations should be viewed as adversarial. Clearly not. I’m all for honesty, respect, transparency, and the like in company-investor relations.  It’s an important long-term relationship.  However, healthy relationships are built on reality. And the reality is that VCs have limited partners for whom they are legally obligated to maximize returns. It doesn’t at all make them bad people. It just means that they, like the rest of us, have a job to do. They are not your best friends, they are not your mom, and they are most certainly not fully “aligned” with the company’s economic interests. Hire your lawyers accordingly.

Drawing a Firm Line

In Austin, you frequently hear the mantra “be authentic.” No, not authentic in some anti-corporate, hipster sense, but “be who you say you are. do what you say you’re going to do.” Don’t hide behind excuses like “this is how it’s always been done before,” or “this is how the game has to be played.” Change the game. Rewrite the rules.

A while back the tech/vc attorneys at E/N sat down together over lunch to discuss the above issue. We’ve all dealt with it at prior firms we worked at, and there was no possible way of doing anything about it there. But there’s a funny thing about leaving big, corporate environments for smaller, focused firms (like startups) – it’s much easier to establish a set of firm principles, infuse them into the group’s culture, and protect them as the group grows.  And here we are: E/N, as a firm, does not and will not play both sides of the Tech VC table.

Everyone here understands it, is committed to it, and anyone who wants to join the firm will have to as well. And many of our clients are well aware of high-profile early-stage investors whom we’ve, politely, chosen not to represent as a result of this policy. Loss in short-term revenue? Sure.  But this is a long-term play. Rather than following other lawyers and firms in chasing anyone who will write us a check, we believe deeply in preserving our clients’ trust, and have chosen to bet on it.  If you want a paper pusher, I’m happy to make some recommendations. We provide legal counsel.

How Founders (Should) Break Up

Nutshell: There are two ways for founders to break up. One preserves everything those founders built together, including a chance of a successful outcome. The other can bring everything crashing down, ruining months, even years, of hard work, and damaging lives in the process. Simple decisions made at the beginning of the relationship dramatically influence which outcome you end up with.

Worthwhile reading:

First off, like any good lawyer, let’s get our definitions straight. I’m talking about Founders (capital F) in this post – meaning the people who were there at the beginning of a startup, or at least well before it became something investors wanted to buy a part of. For better or for worse (probably worse), the term “founder” has become just another title that gets negotiated by early hires to help artificially build their street cred. If you showed up to a startup with your own lawyer, or with data on compensation packages, you’ve gone through very different dynamics from actual founders.

The Honeymoon Period – Setting the Foundation.

Know and trust each other. 

It sounds sappy, but it’s unquestionably true: starting a startup with a cofounder is about as close (emotionally) to starting a family with a spouse as you’ll ever get, without actually starting a family with a spouse. CEOs refer to their startups as “their baby,” and they’re not kidding.

You have to go in totally trusting the other person, and committed to the good of the startup as something separate and higher than your own self-interest. If you don’t, you’re demented and asking for a world of pain.  I look at our portfolio of startup clients, and the vast majority (but not all) of the top ones were started by either (i) two or more cofounders who are real friends, or (ii) a single founder with total control. In each case, minimal time is spent arguing over equity %s or vesting schedules. It doesn’t mean everything is lollipops and sunshine, but everyone knows their role. Founders who are mere ‘business partners’ generally underperform compared to founders with a strong, personal relationship.

Paper it.

Different people have different approaches to marriage. Some are big on prenups, and others aren’t. But for founders, sign some damn contracts. Standard ones that shouldn’t take startup lawyers very long to produce. They should have:

  • Clear language regarding the Company’s ownership of all IP;
  • A vesting schedule (~4 yrs), with a cliff (~1 year);
  • Non-solicits and (depending on the state, but def. if you’re in TX) non-competes;
  • Language about returning all company property on termination; and
  • No ambiguity as to what happens if/when a founder leaves voluntarily or involuntarily.

I’ve often heard founders say something like “we don’t have VCs yet, so we don’t need vesting schedules.” Totally wrong reasoning.  The vesting schedule is there to ensure that if someone walks away before a meaningful milestone (especially if they walk away angry), they can’t take with them any chance of the Company’s ever succeeding.  Try raising VC money with 40% of your cap table held by an inactive founder.   The cliff serves a similar purpose – it puts in black ink what everyone should already understand: this is a long-term project, and if you’re not in it for the long-term, you shouldn’t be signing up.

Papering this kind of arrangement among a good group of founders should not be controversial.  If I start seeing founders bickering over vesting schedules, or random contingencies in their founder docs, my views on their long-term prospects are automatically dropped several notches.  I’m also not a fan of founders negotiating “single trigger acceleration” among themselves – “if you fire me, I get X% of my vesting schedule accelerated”.  If you’ve chosen the right founders, no one should be getting fired unless it’s the right decision for the startup. And if it’s the right decision for the startup, you shouldn’t be walking away with more than what you actually earned.

When the Honeymoon’s Over – A Clean Break.

I’ve said it before, and it’s worth repeating: Contracts Aren’t for the Honeymoon; They’re for the Divorce.  While there are hundreds of reasons why a founder might break away from a startup, if the proper foundation was set, there should be minimal legal ambiguity as to what happens to the startup when that founder is gone.  IP stays, as do all unvested shares. The departing founder keeps what she vested. Deliver everything to the company relating to the startup – hardware, code, login credentials (which should be changed after the departure), etc. Don’t try to take any employees with you, or build a competing product. Move on.  

A simple letter stating the definitive termination date should be delivered by the Company to the departing founder, spelling out what the post-termination equity holdings will be, and delivering the small amount of money needed to repurchase the unvested shares.  It’s also often considered a best practice to give a departing founder a small “sweetener” – a few extra shares, or a little cash, in exchange for signing a full waiver and release of all claims, including a non-disparagement clause (you can’t start insulting everyone on twitter).  Hopefully there aren’t any real claims to waive, but when VCs diligence the company and see an exit of a major founder, it gives them a bit of comfort to see that release signed.  Founder lawsuits have a way of creeping up once a few zeros are added to the valuation.

Emergency Maneuvers.

Not everyone is so lucky to have a clean founder breakup.  Sometimes angry founders refuse to return company property, or refuse to sign documentation relating to their departure.  I’ve even seen situations in which founders are caught maliciously hacking into servers.  Prepare yourself.

If the proper legal foundation was set early on, a refusal to sign anything shouldn’t be a serious problem. Good founder docs are drafted so that simply e-mailing a termination notice, along with a check, gets everything material done. Signatures on termination docs is nice, but not essential. As to other things like refusing to return property, usually the first step is to have some personal conversations about how small startup ecosystems are, and that reputations take a long time to rebuild. A nastygram from your corporate lawyers can help too.  If all that fails, it may be time to get other lawyers (litigators), or other authorities, involved. Hopefully it never gets there.

But if you didn’t do what you were supposed to do when the founders first got together, and now you have an angry, defiant founder who perhaps still owns rights to company IP, or has walked away with half the cap table… well, you fu**ed up. Is this the end of your company? Not necessarily, but it definitely could be. Talk to your lawyers. Maybe there’s enough of an e-mail trail making it clear that IP was intended to be transferred. Maybe a recapitalization (a ‘recap’) is possible to wipe out everyone’s equity and start fresh. Maybe you can eventually convince them to sign the right docs now.  Maybe. Regardless of the outcome, you’re going to be paying your lawyers a lot more (like 20-100x) to clean it up than you would’ve paid to do it right on day one.

Only idiots start families with people they don’t trust, or truly understand. Founders who start companies with people they don’t trust, or who think it’s unnecessary to paper things properly, aren’t much smarter. Find the right cofounder, and then sign some damn contracts. Then hope you never have to read them again, and start building.

Startup Lawyer’s Poker: Fee Deferrals

Nutshell: Startup-focused law firms with well-developed client bases are able and willing to bet on (the 1% of) startups by deferring their fees, but founders should understand what they’re signing up for when agreeing to those arrangements.  In many cases, fee deferrals are just clever ways for firms to “lock in” already de-risked founders and have them ignore massively marked-up price tags on legal services.  Think before you drink the kool-aid. 

It’s no secret that one of the largest expenses that early-stage startups face from their very early days is the cost of hiring competent lawyers. The reason for this is simple: “cloud” economics don’t apply to people. Deploying a SaaS startup has become way cheaper than it was 10 years ago because of all the “X as a Service” that founders can leverage instead of having to invest significant amounts of capital on in-house technology.  But, unsurprisingly, developers still aren’t cheap. Being a good developer requires years of training and unique talent, and being human requires paying for stuff.  Good developers cost real money.  Good lawyers, like good doctors, cost real money.  Anyone suggesting otherwise is attempting to defy the laws of physics.

All that being said, readers of SHL know that there is a lot that smart founders can do to avoid over-paying for legal services:

  • Are you just one or two founders working on an MVP? – Use Clerky and/or, if you need a lawyer, hire a top-tier boutique firm that specializes in early-stage tech, and be careful with generalist solo lawyers.
  • Do you need specialist lawyers for things like trademarks, patents, or other specialty counsel? – Resist the firms that VCs try to force you to use, which are usually very large firms that over-charge clients by $200-300/hr in order to fund their pyramid structures, outdated bureaucracies, and bribes sponsorships of accelerators for funneling companies through them. If you think an extra $200 for every single lawyer hour won’t have a material impact on your runway, do the math again.

If I wanted to get cash-strapped founders to completely ignore the real cost of startup legal services and get them to pay my 2-3x inflated price tags, what would be a great way to accomplish that? Answer: defer my fees until they are less strapped for cash. 

PayDay Loan Meets No-Shop Clause

For many law firms, the fully transparent bargain in a fee deferral can be summed up as follows:

  • Assuming your bill doesn’t go above $X (often something like $25-50K), you don’t have to pay us anything for at least 6-12 months, or until you raise $Y (often a range of $100K-$500K).
  • In exchange, please ignore the fact that everything we charge you will be massively marked up. And we’d also like 1% of your common stock.
  • Also, don’t think about using other law firms for anything while our fees are being deferred – we can’t afford our deferrals if every client goes and hires those lawyers that left our firm 2 years ago and now work for $250/hr less than what we’re charging you for less experienced lawyers. If you do, the bill needs to get paid. This isn’t UNICEF.  The Life Time Value (LTV) isn’t there if all you’re using us for is a fixed-fee formation package.

If a major law firm has made this kind of offer to you, it’s likely because you’ve signaled to them that this “bargain“ is a good deal on their end. Usually, that means you’ve been accepted into a major accelerator, received interest from an investor, or have otherwise been “vetted.” You’ve been de-risked. Smart founders who are lucky to find themselves in this position should obviously ask: if I’m de-risked, is this actually a good deal for my startup?

Be Smarter About It

In startup law, successful late-stage clients cross-subsidize early-stage clients that can’t yet pay their bills. This economic reality ensures that, as long as small firms are stuck working with B-players, the firms with A-clients will always be able to win more A-clients by offering them fee deferrals that the smaller firms simply can’t match.  Startups that don’t want to be bankrupted by lawyers, yet also don’t want to be locked down by gilded handcuffs, really then have two options:

  • Find the efficient A-lawyers, and budget for their services. – Well run focused firms can be dramatically cheaper on early-stage services than traditional firms (and, frankly, better quality), particularly those small firms that regularly work with startups and have optimized their pricing structures for those kinds of companies.  Budget for their services just like you budget for anything else. The truth is you rarely need that much lawyer time before your seed round.
  • Find top-tier smaller firms that are willing to defer. – Remember, only firms with solid client bases can afford to defer their fees for good clients. Many small firms simply won’t do it, but some will.  The deferrals won’t be as large (because your LTV for them is smaller – they aren’t trying to do everything legal for you) but it doesn’t need to be, because the bills are lower.

The evolving law firm ecosystem that I’ve written about is increasingly moving up-market, working with higher-quality clients that once were too afraid to use anyone but the established law firm brands. That means those smaller, more nimble and efficient firms are increasingly able to offer their own “incentives” to attract top-tier clients, without the massive costs of shackling yourself to a single, large full service firm. 

To be honest, I’ve always viewed fee deferrals as an unfortunate, but necessary evil in the startup law space; a kind of smoke and mirrors to distract everyone from the very real problems that traditional law firms are unwilling to address. Does E/N do fee deferrals? Yes, unlike most firms our size, we defer for a small segment of our clients.  I’ve picked enough winners and turned down enough losers to trust my instincts on deferrals.  But if you ask me about deferring my fees, my initial response is always going to be “let’s talk first about how we’ve made top-tier startup law actually affordable.”