“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  If I had a dollar for each time my mother and grandmothers said that to me….  This saying is especially appropriate for businesses and real estate owners and explains why I practice business and real estate law. During law school, I spent my summers working at law firms.  Most of my assignments were for litigation matters (lawsuits).  Something about litigation bothered me, and I soon realized what it was:  litigation was always “after the fact.” 

Something had gone wrong, and the parties had to go to court to fix it and spend lots of money in the process.  Often, they could have avoided going to court if they had done something earlier, like put a certain term in their contract or structure their transaction differently. I decided then that I wanted to be an attorney who helped her clients to do those things “before the fact” so that they wouldn’t have to go to court.  As a business and real estate attorney, I get to do just that.  I spend time at the beginning of a matter to understand what my clients want and how that relates to what they are doing now. 

This helps me to recognize the legal issues involved, discuss those issues with my clients, and help them to decide how to deal with those issues, before they wind up in court.  I don’t make business decisions for my clients, but I do try to give them the information that they need about the legal risks to help them make those decisions.