-: My name is Jeff Mitchell.
I'm a corporate attorney.
I consider pretty much all elements
of a business interaction a transaction.
So if you're starting a business,
where's the money coming from?
What's the goal?
What's the agreement among the founders?
That type of relationship,
to buying and selling businesses,
raising capital stock, those sorts of things.
And everything in between.
So in my business, a significant amount
of my work comes from referrals,
from other people that I've worked with,
and from some marketing, but mostly from referrals.
And initially, I try to spend time
trying to understand what it is
that the potential client actually wants
so that the actual engagement is a better understanding
of their hopes, dreams, plan, vision,
so that we're structuring whatever we're doing,
that's constantly in alignment with that.
And when we get sidetracked,
my clients will often hear me say, "What's the goal?"
because if you're raising capital and the goal
is to raise a million dollars,
sometimes you get terms that are not acceptable
and you've got to balance between
I don't like these terms,
but I'm getting my million dollars.
What's the goal and what's acceptable?
So by doing that at the very front end,
it is much easier for the client
to make sure that they have realistic expectations
and that everybody is in alignment.
Difficult projects can be difficult because they're complex.
Complex because of the number of people involved.
Complex because of the issues involved.
There's just very intricate issues
that have to be dealt with.
That certainly is the case on this one.
Sometimes difficult transactions can be difficult
because people don't have sort of shared expectations.
You might have a buyer who is only willing
to pay a hundred dollars and has these conditions,
and a seller who's only willing
to sell for $200 in these conditions.
And the question is can you get to the middle,
or get to an acceptable alternative,
which is not always in the middle.
And that can make 'em complex.
I utilize a couple of different databases that I pay for
to give me sort of what's market,
what are conditions that are acceptable,
good insight on to the drafting
on some complex issues that I'll go back and rely on.
And then lots of publicly available sources
of information, like the State Corporation Commission.
Other places that attorneys would go
and gather data that I would need.
And then I outsource a lot of the research
and development when it's needed.