Some Business Owners Are Reluctant To Follow The Advice Of An Attorney Who Is Not Necessarily In-House. How Can It Actually Be Especially Helpful To Work With A Legal Professional Who Is Not As Close To The Business?
Key Takeaways:
- Outside counsel has the unique ability to offer objective advice that is not clouded by their own self-interest or concern for their job. They are also not attached to the historical emotional baggage of the company.
- As a firm, we focus on re-framing the current moment of financial difficulty not as the be-all-end-all, but rather as one point in the ongoing story of the company as it adjusts and plans for the future.
It is very important to have an advisor with an objective perspective—an advisor who is not an employee of your company is often the “second opinion” that can give this perspective. This is not to say that an internal person is not extraordinarily valuable; it actually can often be a valuable addition to the advice of internal counsel. This is why people hire contracted consultants.
We counsel and advise, but as the owner you are responsible for making the decisions on what to do with that advice.
An outside advisor with an objective perspective can share in a way that isn’t necessarily tainted by what’s happened in the past. When people work together in a company there are often internal ego-driven decisions and complexes that form. Unfortunately, the problems with those decision often surface when the company is most vulnerable.
An outside advisor is able to objectively examine information from the past and use it as a pure data point without the personal conflicts that may surround the decision that led to a particular outcome. This objectivity gives the owner the advantage of having an unbiased perspective of what is happening and what needs to change without the anxieties that could be created by those serving internally. The only job of an outside attorney advisor is to help you design a path forward from right where you are.
What Will Hiring Your Firm Do For A Struggling Or Failing Business? What Do You Think Sets You And Your Attorneys Apart?
Our approach is different from your typical restructuring or bankruptcy attorney. In our industry, the typical engagement is project-based and we work with a company on one issue until it is resolved. In our practice, what often happens is that those same companies that we successfully restructure end up asking for our advice long after we help them restructure.
Our approach to restructuring a business is more holistic. We understand that when a business must reorganize, the most pressing problem may not necessarily be the answer to longer-term deep-rooted issues in the business. It’s simply a period in your present business operations that is traumatic and potentially devastating, it isn’t what defines the company. Therefore, in our process, we actually take a step back and to look at the whole company. We help our clients contemplate, understand, and make decisions based on where they’ve been, where they are, and where they want to go.
When we help restructure a business, we look at where they are right now as a temporary place or point in the story of their business. The long-term and more permanent story is of the business they are actually here to create…it is the one they describe when talking about the future that they want for the company.
There is often a great deal of emotion that goes into our conversations when we talk about what went wrong and how to restructure in the best possible way. The embarrassment, the fear, and the generally negative emotional place that is caused by the financial challenges they’re facing can affect their outlook. We understand this. And our process of discovery is designed to help mitigate the negative emotions and encourage the hopeful, optimistic, and open-minded ones.
This approach has been extraordinarily valuable to our clients, because we recognize that the work that they do and acknowledge what they’re feeling without allowing succumbing to those feelings. We see clients at the toughest times for their businesses, which in turn are often the toughest times for the business owners personally. Our approach allows us to acknowledge those things while also re-focusing the present moment as only one part of the larger plan.
Another thing that helps us stand out is our policy around redeveloping business plans as part of the bankruptcy process. A bankruptcy can give a business the opportunity for a fresh start. This fresh start begins with an updated business plan that goes far beyond bankruptcy. At the outset of a bankruptcy case, we reset the client’s balance sheet and reset their profit and loss statement. The company essentially re-starts from the date the case is filed. This means that we take all of that old debt, all of their creditors and everybody that’s been asking for this, that, or the other and say, “Look, let’s try this again.”
When we are engaged, we do the research and looked into your history so that we can understand all of the decisions made before. We work to identify the decisions that created value for your business and those that didn’t – and we re-build the plan for your business based on continuous improvement over time. We give entrepreneurs a second chance to do something different, and better. It’s that simple.
When restructuring a company, we find legal strategies to deal with the old stuff (debts, problem areas, redundancies, etc.), and encourage our clients to focus on moving forward. We make sure that we can free up enough cash to put their plan for the future into place, so that they can focus on keeping the energy up for putting that plan into action.
For more information on Business Bankruptcy Law In Michigan, an initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (248) 246-1166 today.