I am a transactional business, real estate, estate planning and securities lawyer, not a litigator (any more thank God!) So, my case results are not about winning lawsuits. but avoiding them in the first place! My 25 years of experience as a real estate attorney and over 30 years practicing law give me a varied perspective on what issues to avoid.
A victory for my clients is not in winning a lawsuit, but in avoiding the possibility of litigation altogether by spotting potential problems in advance. The sad truth is that if you have to hire a business litigation attorney they will very likely charge you an initial fee of around $10,000 and will be billing their time at $400-500/hour. You can easily rack up $10,000 or more per month. Month after month before any result is reached. And this does not include paying any settlement.
Minimizing the chance of law-suits is therefore of paramount importance. How is this done?
Examples: I represented a seller of a warehouse space in central Denver. Buyer wanted to convert the building into a duplex residential building, but it had never been occupied as a residence. Buyer did not want to pay for a survey, which suited my client - seller. But, the title insurance came back with exclusions from their coverage based on "anything which a survey might have revealed." Especially they excluded any boundary issues -- such as whether the building encroached onto a city alley right of way on the western edge of the property, whether the existing property line on the east or south was an encroachment, etc. because a survey had not been performed.
If a survey were performed and revealed such problems, likely the seller would back out of the deal.
But a boundary problem could be a potentially crippling expense for my client if he just issued a General Warranty deed, guaranteeing good and clear marketable title, but the buyer received unsaleable title because of boundary issues then sued the seller.
Solution: I drafted a Special Warranty Deed conforming to the title policy and excluding any un-insurable conditions of title. Buyer accepted the Deed so that the risk of potential boundary problems would be borne by Buyer, not my client.
There was no lawsuit. But, a potential lawsuit avoided was better for my client than a victory in court!