I believe that a lawyer is better at his or her job when he or she can communicate to a client, or approach a case, from a position of personal experience. This belief has limits, of course: don’t work with a criminal defense lawyer who’s been convicted of a crime. But in a general sense, lawyers who can empathize with a client’s experience can provide that client with better advice. And I mean that as more than just legal advice. Laws are just rules to be applied to a set of facts, and that means that every client’s case or objective is unique. To advise a client well means knowing what makes that client’s experience unique, and being able to communicate to that client in a way that addresses their unique ambitions, ideas and concerns. It means being aware that there are more than legal issues affecting a client, and there’s no better way to appreciate those issues than having lived through something similar.

Part of my practice is working with clients who want to start a new business. Few experiences can be as exciting, fulfilling, exhausting and frustrating as starting a new business. I know: I’ve tried it twice. First was my own law office, started when I was fresh out of school, full of ambition but little practical know-how. In hindsight, it was a textbook lesson in how not to start a business. It ran for 14 years, and supported me well enough, but not without a lot of challenges I could have avoided had I sought out the right advice. My next effort followed 14 years later and had absolutely nothing to do with being a lawyer. Beginning in 2013, and continuing for nearly three years, I worked with my good friend, Kevin, toward starting a new brewery in Madison. Over that three year period, we designed a business plan, consulted with experts, explored financing (commercial lenders and private investors), scoped out locations, shopped for equipment, drank a lot of coffee and even more beer, and spent money. Did I become a brewer? I won’t give away the ending. What I admit to becoming, without suspense, is a better lawyer.

In some respects, that’s because I learned about legal issues I had never before had reason to explore. But that’s also because I learned about the non-legal side of starting a business – things my clients need to worry about that normally wouldn’t come to my attention. I learned about the doubts and fears that visit in the dark of night, when our calming voices seem to sleep (but we do not). And, I learned about the exuberance that comes from little victories along the way – that keep you going when the doubts and fears tell you to stop. Less personally, I learned about the road blocks a new business encounters – the lack of easy financing, regulatory hurdles, cost over-runs, internal squabbles, and even the difficulty in defining a product that stands out as unique and necessary.

Over the next year, through newsletter articles and blog posts, I’ll tell the fuller story of my own experience, in hopes of imparting a few lessons along the way. The most important I learned? Entrepreneurs are an independent bunch pursuing the dream of being their own boss, of running a business, creating a product or providing a service according to their own vision. You can understand, then, that entrepreneurs might be slow to ask for help. Don’t be that kind of entrepreneur. There are a lot of things you can accomplish on your own: driving yourself mad or into bankruptcy are two of them, and both are likely if you attempt to start a new business without help. So that’s my first lesson: get help! Get it right at the start. While you and your idea are unique, the process of starting a successful business, thankfully, is not. There are proven methods that apply to a wide variety of startups and, while they cannot guaranty success, they can help head off common mistakes that doom otherwise good ideas.

Next post, I’ll dive more into my own story, and introduce you to some of the resources available to budding entrepreneurs. In the meanwhile, check out our library of past posts touching on all sorts of issues related to new and existing businesses.

Lance A. McNaughton practices estate planning, probate, business, and real estate law in both Lafayette and Green Counties in Wisconsin. He can be reached by e-mail at mcnaughton@swwilaw.com.