Choosing the Right Business Attorney for Your Needs
When you’re building or running a business, legal guidance isn’t a one-size-fits-all matter. Business law covers a wide range of issues, and the attorney you hire can make a big difference in both cost and outcome. There are three main types of business attorneys: litigators, transactional technicians, and entrepreneurial attorneys. Knowing when to use each one can help you get the best results without overspending.
Litigators Handle Disputes
Litigators are the attorneys who handle conflict. Whether you’re dealing with arbitration, court cases, or legal threats like cease and desist letters, litigators are trained for legal battles. They’re the right fit when a business problem escalates and needs resolution through legal processes that involve a judge or mediator.
Use a litigator when:
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You’re facing a lawsuit
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You need to take legal action
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You’re in a contract dispute that can’t be resolved internally
Transactional Attorneys Help Build Agreements
On the other end of the spectrum are transactional attorneys. These lawyers focus on contracts, agreements, and the legal structure of your business relationships. Their job is to help you avoid problems in the first place.
There are two types of transactional attorneys:
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Technicians – These lawyers are detail-oriented and excellent at crafting contracts, partnership agreements, and other legal documents. They work behind the scenes to keep your business compliant and protected.
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Entrepreneurial Attorneys – These professionals bring legal and business thinking together. They help you see the bigger picture by weighing legal risks against business opportunities. They’ve often owned businesses themselves or worked with companies in high-stakes scenarios like mergers, acquisitions, or large negotiations.
The Role of an Entrepreneurial Attorney
An entrepreneurial attorney doesn’t replace the need for technicians or litigators. Instead, they act more like a quarterback, helping you map out your legal strategy and then bringing in the right professionals to execute each part. While their hourly rate may be higher, their strategic thinking can save you significant money in the long run.
They’re helpful when:
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You’re making major changes like expanding, merging, or selling your business
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You’re building a long-term legal strategy
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You want guidance on how to organize your legal team efficiently
Entrepreneurial attorneys are usually not involved in every single contract or legal issue. Instead, they help plan the approach and let other specialists carry out the details.
When and How to Use Legal Support
Not every situation requires high-level legal planning. If you’re drafting a standard contract, a technician might be all you need. For small disputes, a litigator can step in. But for annual or quarterly planning, it can be helpful to involve an entrepreneurial attorney who can ask the right questions and point out potential risks early.
Some business owners meet with this type of lawyer just once or twice a year—during goal-setting or strategic planning meetings—to get legal insight on upcoming projects. This proactive approach can reduce legal fees and avoid bigger problems down the road.
Saving Money with Proactive Legal Planning
One business reportedly cut its legal fees from over $100,000 per year to under $10,000 by thinking ahead. By spotting legal risks early, they avoided expensive cleanups later. That kind of result comes from planning, not reacting.
A resource like the “Legal Operating System” can help you do this yourself or with an entrepreneurial attorney. Whether you’re running quarterly planning sessions or launching a new initiative, having a legal strategy in place makes a difference.
Final Thoughts for Business Owners
You don’t need a full legal team on retainer to make smart decisions. Understanding the different types of attorneys—and when to use each—can help you get better results while spending less. Whether it’s setting up the right contracts, preparing for potential conflicts, or planning long-term growth, there’s a right type of legal support for every stage of your business.
Video Transcript
Understanding the Three Types of Business Attorneys
There are three types of business attorneys, and when you understand the difference, you can figure out, “Which type of attorney do I need for a particular situation?”
Now you have probably heard there are two different types of business attorneys: Litigators and transactional attorneys. Litigators are the type of attorney who are used to dealing with fights.
The Role of Litigators
These are legal disputes, whether it is arbitration or in the courtroom, a trial, or maybe it is before that point where it is sending a cease and desist letter or preparing a lawsuit or something like that. But litigators generally are equipped at fighting in any process that ultimately leads to a judge or a decision maker resolving the dispute.
The Role of Transactional Attorneys
Transactional attorneys, on the other hand, deal with deals, contracts, partnerships, and relationships. They are on the front end trying to avoid the problems that typically happen with litigators.
The Third Type of Business Attorney
But I told you there are three categories, and here are the three: Litigator, but then within transactional attorneys, there are two types.
The first one is a technician. A technician is somebody who is used to wordsmithing the details, is very good at the skills trained in law school, and you need a technician. A technician is very important.
What Makes an Entrepreneurial Attorney Different
But often what happens is business attorneys who have been practicing for a while or who have their own businesses, they turn into this third category, which I would call entrepreneurial attorneys.
The entrepreneurial attorney is essentially able to look at a deal and figure out not just what needs to be done technically, but what are the big dynamics, big risks, and big opportunities to consider. An entrepreneurial attorney looks at a legal situation from the mind of an entrepreneur using the benefit of the resources of a lawyer.
A lawyer who has been in the trenches, whether it is a litigator or transactional attorney. A lawyer who has gone through law school but has the mindset of a business owner.
Why Businesses Benefit from an Entrepreneurial Attorney
In my opinion, every business needs an entrepreneurial attorney. That is somebody who can essentially take the big stuff and figure out, “How do I line up the technicians where needed, or the litigators where needed?”
Experience and Cost Considerations
Typically, you will pay more money for that entrepreneurial attorney because you are not just paying for somebody who has gone through law school but somebody who has gone through a decade or two of business ownership, navigating very large deals, handling mergers, acquisitions, buyouts, or other difficult situations. It is these complex deals from the mind of an entrepreneur that provides so much value to the business owner.
When to Use Each Type of Attorney
So, should you have an entrepreneurial attorney do everything for you? The answer is no. Generally, you are going to have an entrepreneurial attorney do an initial assessment. That assessment involves, “What kind of attorneys do we need? How much should we be paying? What is our legal strategy? What are the legal options?” It is kind of mapping out a plan, which then the technicians and the litigators, as needed, can actually implement.
Delegation and Cost Efficiency
So usually you are paying this quarterback to plan out a play, but then you use the individual attorneys at much lower rates to execute that plan.
Now, sometimes you might need an entrepreneurial attorney at the helm. You might need them navigating some storm that you are going through, but usually a great entrepreneurial attorney can delegate to a team of people, whether it is in a law firm or colleagues at other firms. So you are getting the lowest rate possible while benefiting from a solid plan based on years of experience.
Choosing the Right Type for Your Needs
So what is the takeaway here? Well, if you need a simple contract, you can have a transactional attorney who is a technician, very good at writing up contracts, or if you have a small legal dispute, you can have a litigator.
For Strategic Planning and Long-Term Growth
But when you have the bigger stuff or you are planning long term with your business, that is where it may make sense to hire an attorney even one or two hours a year, just to think through the big planning and the big items.
The Legal Operating System
In order to help you do that, I created the legal operating system. So the legal operating system essentially gives you two options. One is it has training that helps you think like a lawyer and tries to pass on to you the most important legal knowledge so you can make decisions that are good for your business.
The second option is to meet with an attorney who can help you navigate the big stuff. An entrepreneurial attorney, maybe a couple times per year. Maybe it is at your quarterly goal-setting meetings where your leadership team reviews your goals and your progress. And any ideas that you have, you are then bouncing off your attorney, who can spot what are issues, what are concerns, and how do we get ahead of those so we save money, we avoid litigation, and we avoid legal fees.
Cost Savings from Proactive Legal Planning
One of my clients reduced their legal fees from over a hundred thousand dollars per year to less than $10,000 a year, and they did that because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as the old saying goes. That is, it costs you a lot less money to avoid problems than to clean them up.
Consistent Legal Awareness
And that is where, in the legal operating system, if you, at least on a quarterly basis, consider, “What are we changing? What are we doing new? What are we planning to implement?” and either you bounce that off your business attorney or you go through the training yourself for the legal operating system, so you are equipped with the legal knowledge you need to avoid legal problems down the road.
Final Note
I am Aaron Hall. I am an attorney for business owners and entrepreneurial companies.
You can learn more at the legaloperatingsystem.com.