How to Be Your Own
Real Estate Lawyer!

While you will often need to hire an attorney for certain transactional documents and legal advice, there are many basic documents you can prepare on your own - IF you know how!

Most investors, both beginner and experienced, lack the necessary legal training to prepare contracts, addenda, mortgages, leases, and other essential legal documents. All too often, they either try to "wing it" and/or download generic forms on the Internet to get the job done. This practice can be downright DANGEROUS! If your legal documents are not appropriate for your transaction and/or filled out improperly, you will have an expensive mess that lawyers like me will need to fix. As the old muffler commercial goes, "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later!" Trust me, it always costs MORE later...

While attorneys may always be necessary to review some of your legal documents, many simple ones can be prepared by a layperson. My law office frequently receives requests from new clients to prepare a simple deed or promissory note. While it may only take me (or my paralegal) ten minutes to prepare such a document, the fee is likely to be $500 or more. Why so much? The answer is simple - accepting any new client takes time to set up in the client database and is a potential risk to a lawyer's business because of the potential for malpractice liability. Thus, any person who calls a lawyer "off the street" to do a $50.00 task is going be charged a minimum fee to be worth it for him. For me, it's a minimum one hour of my time, which is almost $500.00.

Seems unfair? Too bad!!! I didn't spend four years in college, three years in law school, and 35 years in practice to get paid for the work I do. We lawyers get paid for what we KNOW! And those who are not "in the know" have to pay through the nose - unless they are wise enough to learn how to do it on their own.

So many beginners try to "wing it" with legal issues and legal documents because they think an attorney's services are too expensive.  They try to do the "DIY" thing, thinking, "How hard can it be?" Well, as the old saying goes, "There's what you know, what you don't know, and what you DON'T KNOW THAT YOU DON'T KNOW!" The last part is the one that should keep you up at night. If you are operating your real estate investing business thinking you can handle every legal issue, you are kidding yourself. There's nothing worse than finding out what you didn't know that you didn't know (especially when it's told to you by a judge in court!).

You can't possibly be expected to know (and remember) EVERY law or rule about real estate, but you can certainly get to the point to know when a potential pitfall exists and/or when to ask for help. You undoubtedly have heard the expression, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." Well, the more you know, the more likely you can avoid expensive mistakes. Make it a point to learn the ins and outs of your business so that you don't end up in court writing big checks to lawyers for mistakes that you could have avoided!

A Personal Note from Bill...

There are those to make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those that wonder, "What happened?" I encourage you to step off the sidelines and get into the game if you want to profit from this very small and limited window of opportunity to learn important tools for your real estate business. Do whatever you need to do to attend this training. As my mom always said, "You can make excuses or you can make money - but you can't do BOTH!"

Don't miss this exciting and informative event or you will miss being the top 1% of investors who know and understand the technical, legal, and practical information taught during this training! Don't slack, delay, or put it off - register today!

Your partner in success,