Avoiding Lawsuits - Exhibit A
I'm adding a new category to this blog: Avoiding Lawsuits. Using attorneys preventively, to avoid lawsuits rather than handle them is so much more cost effective. I know it's hard to justify the cost of having an attorney sit in at management or Board meetings, or draft agreements that you can copy from other companies. But trust me, the cost is a tiny fraction of even an uncomplicated lawsuit.
I'm going to try to post hints for businesses to help avoid lawsuits.
Today's hint, from direct from yesterday's time slips is: if you're a service business, or even if you sell a custom product, document your activities carefully. Engineers and service providers should keep a log of their activities.
Most companies are good at this if, like attorneys, they are charging by the hour. But often if there's a set fee or, as I said it's a product being custom built, they don't.
Quite often collections cases revolve around "how much work was done, and when was it done." If my client can produce a log showing that engineer A worked on the project on on these day and project manager B met with client those days, and here are the emails back and forth, I can often get the money paid.
You don't have to keep the time involved (unless you are billing by the hour), but a good log, backed up in the ordinary course of business is invaluable. And once a project is completed, make a file of all of the emails with the client (acrobat as a clever email to pdf converter that makes a very nicely organized .pdf file), and save it with the client's other work.
Please.
