Cut Legal Bills by 80% With a 30-Minute Monthly Habit

Legal fees are one of the most unpredictable and frustrating expenses for growing businesses. But there’s a simple monthly habit that can help midsize companies slash those costs significantly—sometimes by as much as 80%.

Aaron Hall, an attorney who works with businesses that have 10 to 250 employees, shares a method that doesn’t require hiring a full-time legal team. It just takes 30 minutes a month and a shift in how you plan.

Why Legal Costs Get Out of Hand

Many businesses only reach out to their lawyer after a problem shows up. Whether it’s a dispute, contract issue, or intellectual property conflict, waiting too long often means spending a lot more.

And if you’ve ever thought, “I wish our leadership team had some legal background,” you’re not alone. Legal problems aren’t just about bad luck—they’re often predictable if someone knows what to look for.

The Simple Habit That Saves Thousands

The fix is easier than you might expect. Build a short legal check-in into your monthly or quarterly leadership meetings. During this time, ask one question:

“Are we planning anything new that we should run by an attorney?”

This includes:

New products or services
Changes in vendor or supplier relationships
Strategic partnerships
Hiring key personnel
Launching new brands
Developing custom software

These shifts often carry legal implications. If they’re flagged early, the legal work can be simple, fast, and inexpensive. Ignoring them can lead to complex and costly cleanups later.

Train Your Team to Spot Legal Issues

This habit is known as “issue spotting.” Lawyers use it to identify legal risks before they become liabilities. You don’t need a law degree to start doing this.

There are three ways to make it work:

Build a routine: Bring legal issue spotting into your regular business meetings.
Get basic training: Resources like the “Legal Operating System” offer training so your leadership team can learn what to look for.
Loop in your lawyer: Invite your attorney to recap sessions or strategy meetings a few times a year. They don’t need to be there constantly—just enough to catch major developments before they become problems.

A Real Example From the Field

Let’s say your team is building custom software for a client. One legal question that should be asked upfront: Who owns the code? If that’s not clear in a contract, you could face a major dispute down the road.

This kind of issue is common and easily prevented—with the right conversations early on.

How Much Can You Save?

Aaron Hall reports that businesses can often save around $80,000 for every $10,000 they spend spotting and addressing legal risks early. That’s a 10x return.

And the best part? You don’t have to change attorneys. You just need to involve them earlier—ideally with a clear plan.

How to Get Started

Set aside 30 minutes in your next strategy meeting for legal issue spotting.
Review upcoming changes in your business operations.
Decide what’s worth flagging for legal input.
Either schedule a legal check-in with your current attorney or get trained so your team can identify the red flags on their own.

You can also explore more training through resources like legaloperatingsystem.com or connect with professionals who offer these kinds of strategic planning sessions.

Final Thought

Legal costs don’t have to be unpredictable. A short, consistent habit can protect your business, avoid expensive mistakes, and let your leadership team stay focused on growth—not lawsuits.

Video Transcript:

Who This Helps and Why It Matters

Aaron Hall: This little tip can save midsize companies tens of thousands of dollars in their legal budget every year. I am Aaron Hall. I work with entrepreneurial companies as an attorney. Typically, they have from 10 to 250 employees. These companies are too small to just have a full-time attorney. So they usually work with a law firm.

The Legal Budget Drain

Maybe they have a solo attorney or a small team that they work with as different needs come up. You might be in that situation. Maybe you use an employment attorney from time to time, a contract attorney, or maybe trademark. And what I found is companies like you, who have 10 to 250 employees, end up spending a lot of money dealing with stuff after the problem arose.

A Better Way to Handle Legal Risk

And you might think to yourself, “I wish we had an attorney on staff, or maybe even better.” rather than having an attorney who second-guesses everything and is always talking about risk aversion. It would be even better if your officers of the company had legal training or had some background as a business attorney.

One Game-Changing Technique

You may be thinking that would be ideal. And as I have thought about how can I help companies avoid these problems and prevent all the legal issues and all the legal expense, or at least most of it, there is one technique that we have implemented that has made a huge difference. And so I want to talk about what that is and how you can implement it in your company.

Small Habit, Big Return

It is really not hard. It does not take much time. There is a very small amount of expense, but the payoff is typically tenfold. In other words, you may save $10,000 by paying a thousand dollars, or you may pay $10,000 with your attorney. So I am not suggesting you have to switch attorneys, but by spending $10,000 upfront, you end up saving roughly a hundred thousand dollars.

The Monthly Practice That Saves Big

So here is the approach: Step number one is put into your monthly or quarterly meetings a very brief moment to review, “Do you have anything new coming up that you should run by your attorney?” This would be a new product offering, service offering, new strategic partnership, a new relationship, a major supplier or vendor change. Any major change in relationship is typically an issue to talk with your attorney about.

What to Flag for Your Attorney

So whether you meet monthly or quarterly, thinking about when you talk about these big initiatives or big changes, flag the issues to discuss with your attorney. Likewise, if you have any new brands or you are hiring any new high-level people. Flag the issue to talk with your attorney.

Legal Risk Is Easier to Spot Than You Think

Attorneys call this issue spotting, and the idea is implement into your company’s operating system a regular review of any legal issues that you need to flag or issue spotting. So what this looks like with my clients typically is either I am having a regular conversation with them, and I ask them the questions about, “What do they have coming up? What are the cool things they are exploring? What are they doing now? Any new changes in what you are offering or any new divisions or shifts in the marketplace that you guys are leveraging?” And when we talk about that, it helps me spot the issues that are coming up.

Flag Business Changes, Even if You’re Unsure

So one way to do this is, as an executive team, make sure you flag those issues. Now you might be saying, “We do not always know what those issues are.” You can just look at them from a business standpoint and say, “Hey, we are doing this. Let us just run that by our attorney.”

Option 1: Get Legal Issue Spotting Training

But there are two other options here. One other option is to actually get training. We have the legal operating system training, and you can go to legaloperatingsystem.com and find out more about getting that training. So you and your executive team has the training to spot those issues yourself.

Option 2: Invite the Attorney to Strategy Meetings

And then the second option is either if you do not want to bring those issues to your attorney, invite your attorney to some of those strategic planning meetings so that the attorney can hear what you are talking about, even if it is just a little recap at the end of your board meetings or strategic planning meetings, so you can say to the attorney, “Hey, here is what we are thinking about. Here is what we are doing.”

A Common Example of Missed Legal Issues

This might even be something big you are doing for a client or a customer. For example, say you are developing some new software for a customer. One conversation I have is, “Where are you getting the code for that customer, and who is going to own the rights to that code? Both the code that you use to generate for the client, as well as once you have generated that code for the client, do you have contracts that say, ‘Who owns that?'”

How Simple Planning Avoids Disputes

So just spotting those issues ahead of time can save tens of thousands of dollars later in preventing fights, litigation, contract breach negotiations, arbitration, and all those nasty legal disputes that are so distracting for your creative team and for your executive team by building in, in advance into your routines, a little habit of spotting the business issues that may have legal implications. By spotting those and then identifying what do we need to do legally to address that, that can save your company tens of thousands of dollars.

The 80% Reduction That’s Possible

In my experience, about 80% of the expense for legal that company spend can be saved if we deal with issues on the front end. You might be wondering, “Do I do that?” Yes, I do this on a regular basis. Sometimes it is with my regular clients. Many times I will just do one or two meetings a year with a company.

Spot the Issues, Build the Plan

This is to have this conversation for an hour, sometimes two separate one-hour conversations, maybe a month or three months apart. So that we spot these issues, we get together a plan, and then you use your local attorney to implement that plan. You do not need somebody at my level to implement the plan, but usually you need somebody who has been around the block and has some experience and some entrepreneurial background to spot those issues, have an efficient conversation, and then pass along that plan to your local attorney, who can get a trademark for you or draft a contract or set up whatever needs to be set up. Once the issues are spotted and a strategic plan is put in place.

Legal Tools and Training

If you would like to learn more, simply subscribe to this YouTube channel or go to legaloperatingsystem.com, where you can get more information on the legal operating system that I put together. You can also visit me at AaronHall.com.

I am Aaron Hall, an attorney for entrepreneurial companies and business owners.