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?

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.

Is sharing knowledge a good strategy? I obviously think so, particularly when what you share is just an introduction AND when potential clients realize that their circumstances do matter and can’t be addressed in a few hundred words (or more) on incorporation.

Giving tools to my clients helps them become better consumers of my services. I don’t want to charge someone $250 to spend an hour explaining the same answers to the same questions. Not only is that not very interesting, but it’s fundamentally not my value proposition (there’s a reason I point certain people to Nolo.com for books) and, therefore, actually devalues my services in the eyes of clients.

In my field, competence is assumed; for my clients, excellence is required: they trust me with their most complex problems as well as the straightforward management of legal issues. I can’t imagine having any client who I didn’t respect enough to teach.

Recently, Wilson Sonsini released a “term sheet generator” tool, that allows start-ups to create a menu-driven term sheet that serves to guide a conversation with a [WSGR] lawyer. I think it’s a great idea — why not teach our clients to be educated consumers, not only of the contracts and deals and transactions that third parties bring to them, but of our own services as well?

Teaching my clients is part of who I am: it shows them that I respect them at the same time as it shows them my appreciation for the issues they’re facing.

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.

I will complain, however, about the article’s use of the word “sheepskin” to refer to a diploma or college degree: “…dramatically undermining any value a sheepskin adds.”

A few weeks ago, there was an episode of the show “House” that had a character, a working-class fellow who owned a scrapyard. Talking to his son the night before graduation, he mentions wanting to watch his son “get that sheepskin.”

Please! Who has ever used that word, deliberately and honestly, in casual conversation? “Sheepskin” is one of those words that no one actually uses and should have died out years ago. My belief is that it’s kept alive by writers who know lots of words and simply get bored with using “diploma” or “degree” or anything similar. “Sheepskin” has a nice Shakespearean tone to it, and if challenged, the writer can always launch into the “well, in the olden days, they actually…” story and further impress people about her extensive knowledge of stuff that matters much less than we thought it did in college.

Full disclosure: I was an English major at a liberal arts college, and I really liked it. I read a lot, and I am trying to write more. I seriously considered becoming a professor. To add insult to injury, I have an Ivy-League law degree and started out as a litigator, one of those people who writes long persuasive argumentative documents and letters. I have already walked the path these people are, with one small difference. I’ve listened more to the people around me and realize when language is just not appropriate.

These phrases have effectively turned into jargon or argot [see, I did it there just to prove a point -- argot is a French word, borrowed by English, that means slang], even though they don’t meet the traditional definitions of those terms. “Sheepskin” isn’t a term of art among anyone, but using it creates the same effects as the use of jargon: exclusion, hubris, and confusion.

For lawyers, I’ve found the “Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage” to be very helpful at eliminating the stumbling-block phrases that seem to infect legal writing more than you think. I like this book so much that it’s my standard gift to new lawyers and law students that I know. It’s that good.

I’ve always liked Quentin Tarantino’s comment about his films; he said that even if you didn’t like the story, the film, or any number of other things, you had to admit that he wrote great dialogue that sounded realistic. People don’t always talk like they do in Jackie Brown or Pulp Fiction, but they could.

When you’re editing your own writing, think about your audience and catch those words that they wouldn’t ever write themselves. Eliminating the deadwood words will freshen up your writing and help it flow more smoothly.

Please add your suggestions for similar words that should be retired in the comments; I’ll do a round-up post once we have enough nominations.