Start-up founders tend to be risk-takers, while lawyers are experts at managing risks. It is an entrepreneur’s role to dream of everything that will go right with a company and shout about that to the world. It’s a lawyer’s role to think about all the things that could go wrong with the company and think of ways to avoid these problems from occurring.
Start-up founders are often optimists and for them, the potential for legal risks can be easily underestimated. It may be difficult to imagine a trusted employee giving away a trade secret, a supplier providing something substantially poorer quality than you paid for, or a customer refusing to pay an invoice, but these things happen. That’s when good lawyers come in.