The idea is to give readers an informed opinion that, while not specific to their situation, highlights some of the major issues involved in various decisions, such as whether to form an LLC or corporation for your tech startup. (Hint: read this first.)

What is free advice all about?

To some, these posts look like free advice, which makes no sense for a lawyer who gets paid for giving advice. But that’s only half-right at most. From the lawyer’s perspective, only specific advice is worthwhile — after all, you can learn lots of general stuff about incorporation, venture financing documents, and even (although rarely) about venture math from lawyers, VCs, and entrepreneurs (who are now VCs).

What I tell prospective clients is this: you need advice that is competent, focused, reliable, and dedicated. These other writers all fall short on one or more of these factors, and even my own posts have the fault, necessary though it may be, of not being specific to *your* exact situation. Even something as otherwise “standard” as the Delaware C-corp will not apply to certain tech startups depending on the business model, the resources available to the founders, and even the actual nature of the underlying business. Could I lay out some examples here? Sure, but even then you wouldn’t necessarily be sure that your situation fell within the general guidelines. And you wouldn’t know whether there is some other fact in your situation that would change everything, like a substantial spendthrift trust for your living expenses. Trust me: no VC is worried about that issue from your perspective.

If I can’t ever get “real” advice, am I wasting my time?

So why do I write if I’m ultimately doomed to fail by my own standards? Well, first, I think there’s no harm in having high standards. Second, my real goal isn’t, and can’t be, to give you THE answer. Third, what I can do is tell you most of the questions, point you to many of the factors, and most importantly, show you how I approach the issues and structure my advice.

Because what you need, what you come to me for, is trusted advice. I show you that I’m trustworthy by showing (not telling) you that I know what I’m talking about and by giving you lots of evidence of my mindset so that you can see what sort of service, experience, and advice you’re getting.

And that makes a difference for different types of work: putting a typical venture deal together requires a classic Silicon Valley approach: focus on the high payoff terms, put everything else within the zone of reason, and get the parties moving forward; on the other hand, negotiating debt with strict operating covenants and a *gulp* personal guarantee requires a classic New York City approach: no stone unturned, every phrase — representation, covenant, and condition — examined and pushed in your direction.

Please share any examples of when you got the “wrong” type of lawyer for work you needed. What do you expect from a lawyer — what’s just the price of admission and what closes the deal?

As I think about it now, I suppose I should edit to make that point clearer. But it’s there even without the keywords. I’ll explore this framework further on Simplifying Complexity if there’s interest: are you interested?

The new page, Observations, is available from the header throughout rickcolosimo.com. Depending on the amount of feedback from those items, I may try to integrate them into the regular posts for anyone viewing the RSS feed.

Let me know what you think.

Quick Reference for Causes of Action and Affirmative Defenses in Texas. — Caselaw Snippets from Recent Texas Appellate Opinions.

Lawyers with a national practice (often driven by national clients) can spend a surprising amount of time pulling specific quotes from the relevant jurisdiction to either get complaints or answers filed or serve as the initial structure for various motions. The exact language of a cause of action may vary just slightly from state to state, and it never hurts to have the elements exactly right, since words, and the particularities of construction and meaning, are the tools of a good lawyer.

This is a great idea worth copying and extending to other jurisdictions, and even, if another tech-savvy lawyer were inclined, to collate into a wiki-style site to collect these statements.

Laws (and court opinions) belong to the people.

I’ve got productivity software reviews, posts about behavioral analysis, and comments on corporate governance. And even a few social media how-to’s.

Finally — a question for you: what questions would you like to see answered in posts? And does anyone have any suggestions for me on how/where best to present my more law-related posts?

This boingboing post refers to two compounds as “powerful yet nontoxic” and “safe.” Luckily the commenters are smarter and note the fact that sodium hydroxide, conveniently labeled as NaOH for those who passed high school chemisty, is LYE. Ugh. Not recommended.

Knowledge is not a dangerous thing. Stupidity is dangerous. Thinking you have knowledge is more dangerous. Wisdom is knowing where your personal line between knowing and just thinking you know lies. (Yes, that’s a lawyerly skill — well-trained lawyers are typically very good at helping you discover that line during their questioning.)

If you are blogging about multiple issues, you should consider separating your blog writing into categories to improve or reinforce your personal branding. Leading by example, here’s our breakdown:

http://www.thoughtstorm.com/blog.html – this is the TSC “official” blog. I try to keep the topics closely aligned to our thinking, our service offerings, and our opinions about similar transactions or related issues. I will soon be making this content the primary focus of the website, using it to give a fuller impression of who we are and how we think – what separates us from larger firms providing seemingly similar services.

http://www.rickcolosimo.com/ - this is my “personal” blog. By personal, I mean only that it’s separate from my TSC business. But I fully expect that business contacts will also see this blog and so the real difference is that I address topics that are slightly different from the TSC core business , such as more law-related issues, or expansions of TSC ideas and themes into other areas that TSC would be unlikely to explore for business.

http://www.30seats.com/ – this is the autism-related blog that I primarily write. I am trying to focus it on creating tools to help people (parents) help themselves. It will slowly accrete links to Pam’s blog (below) and to our wiki-driven site for creating and collecting content, to be found at www.wolfhoundfund.org (no link since it’s not fully installed yet).

http://pamcolosimo.blogspot.com/ – this is my wife’s “science of autism” blog. She has a Ph.D. in Genetics and is beginning to look for a position following the completion of her NIH post-doctoral fellowship at Sloan-Kettering in NYC. Its purpose is as much to get her in the practice of writing about science as it is to provide a deeper portfolio that will resonate with the people she meets.

As you can see, there are some clear lines we’ve drawn between what goes where. While this could be accomplished on a single blog, there are, at least in our case, pretty clear distinctions between the types of things I write about. The autism-related issues, in particular, are interesting to a very different group of people than those who care about our use of data-driven analysis to guide pre-merger due diligence on target companies. Of course the groups overlap to some extent, but nearly everything about the communication is different – tone, style, frequency, subject matter, and call to action. It makes sense to us to give people what they want. Separating your blogs helps people understand what you’re offering. With the cost of a second blog being so low (free from a blogger.com/wordpress.com perspective), the benefits to your readers almost certainly outweigh the costs. Using a second or third blog improves the signal-to-noise ratio for your readers when your topics diverge.

Please feel free to describe your blog separation strategy in the comments, or why you have decided not to use different blogs.