SOLICITOR : When to Consult the.—Many a business man would save himself a great deal of worry and a great deal of expense if he consulted his lawyer when the proper occasion demanded it. Some business men pride themselves on a knowledge of law, but a knowledge of law which has any workaday value is only gained by an expensive outlay of time. A business man who devotes much attention to a complete knowledge of the law on the subjects relating to his business, is undoubtedly wandering into a side issue, when he might be profitably employing his time on his own business problems. A knowledge of the law relating to any particular trade is valuable, but for the average business man to acquire a lawyer's knowledge of the law on that subject implies an amount of study which would be scarcely profitable.
Roughly speaking, a business man's affairs touch the legal point of view almost in every detail, but the average run of business transactions do not provide for any possibility of dispute. The business man knows when his affitirs are outside formal channels and passing into a phase where the interpretation of the matter might be capable of two points of view. Where the matter would have to be decided by an outside opinion, the legal aspect of the affairs would have to be considered, and it is at this point that a consultation with a lawyer is vitally necessary. Much litigation is provoked by the business man not knowing exactly where he stands as a matter of law. He trusts his own experience and the opinions of his friends in judging matters which are capable of only a legal interpretation. Making agree ments on these lines, interpreting the meaning of a contract, enforcing settlements of his accounts, he is very often placed in a position in which questions of law arise, but which he ignores in favour of passing judgment out of his own experience. Consulting a solicitor is very much a matter for the business man himself to decide, and he is too apt to look upon it in the same way that people regard calling in the services of a medical man. Until matters get desperate, few people dream of calling in a doctor, and when they call in his services, afihirs have arrived at such a pass that he is frequently unable to render any actual assistance, although, had he been called in time, the grave condition of affairs might have been considerably modified. Similarly a business man will conduct his own negotiations up to the point where he gets into a serious tangle, and very often when he calls in the help of his solicitor to unravel the difficulty, affairs have proceeded to such a position that his interests are seriously compromised.
A wise rule in judging the necessity of advice is to apply the test of considering a question in the light of one's own knowledge. Business experience teaches much of legal matters, and in the routine work of the day the average business man knows where he stands at every step. The question for him to ask himself, when dealing with intricate negotia tions, is, " Do I know that I am right as a matter of fact, or am I simply passing the facts urahr review for an instinctive judgment ?" In other words, it is necessary to be able to know where knowledge ceases and where one continues negotiations on decisions which are little better than guess-work. The wise business man, who is bent on conserving his best resources, will never allow any delicate negotiation to pass from the routine stages which he knows step by step into that vague land where he is merely guessing. Directly he feels that he is called upon to decide a question of right upon which his experience teaches him nothing, he will go to a solicitor and see that his opinions are based on a proper interpretation of the legal facts of the matter.
The difficulty of many business men is to determine when this stage in the negotiations has been reached, and the tendency is to go on a step further without being sure of the ground. Nearly every legal dispute placed before a lawyer might have been settled amicably in its early stages. Diffi culties arise when the parties have committed themselves to certain actions without being sure of their legal ground, and when the solicitor is called in to advise in such cases he is frequently face to face with errors of judgment that cannot be remedied without compromise. It is worth a business man's while to know exactly where he stands at every stage in any negotiations involving considerable legal responsibilities, and it is safe advice to suggest that directly he feels that he is out of his depth in this connection he should call in the services of the man whose business it is to interpret such points. Not only is useless litigation saved by this wise precaution, but much ill-feeling is prevented. Many business men lose golden opportunities in the conduct of their affairs by so hopelessly com promising themselves that it is impossible to conduct further negotiations, on various business matters, without a loss of that friendly relationship which has so much to do in inspiring mutual confidence.