Episode #279: Stop Treating Your Business Lawyer Like a Vending Machine with Matt Bracy

Matt Bracy helps business owners make better legal decisions before those decisions become expensive problems. As a partner at Scheef & Stone, former litigator, former general counsel, and corporate business lawyer, Matt brings the perspective of someone who has both provided and purchased legal services.

In this episode, Matt explains why business owners often misuse legal counsel by treating lawyers like vending machines: show up, pay money, demand a document, and disappear again. He makes the case for using a business lawyer as a contextual advisor who understands your company, your priorities, your risk tolerance, and where you are trying to go. Matt also covers how to choose the right lawyer, why vague contracts create litigation risk, and how middle-market founders can control legal costs without cutting corners on the issues that matter.

Want to learn more about Matt Bracy's work? Visit Scheef & Stone at http://www.solidcounsel.com.

Connect with Matt Bracy on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattbracy/.

You can also reach Matt directly at matt.bracy@solidcounsel.com.

Think you'd be a great guest on the show? Apply at https://podcast.allies4me.com/podcast-guest/.

Want to learn more about Craig Andrews' work at allies4me? Check out his website at https://allies4me.com/.

Key Points & Timestamps

00:00:11 - Matt Bracy is introduced as a partner at Scheef & Stone, a former litigator and general counsel, and now a corporate business lawyer advising domestic and international companies.
00:07:01 - Matt shares the early lesson from his father that whatever work you do, you should strive to be the best you can be at it.
00:13:51 - Matt explains his corporate business law practice: contracts, general counsel services, business advice, and M&A work for companies.
00:17:22 - A business lawyer is not a wizard who makes the decision. Matt says the lawyer's job is to equip the client with facts, consequences, and law so the client can choose.
00:18:58 - Matt uses a 50/50 founder partnership example to show how legal counsel can identify risks like deadlock before the relationship breaks down.
00:22:19 - Attorney-client relationships depend on trust, especially for middle-market founder-led companies where the business is often one of the owner's most important life assets.
00:23:44 - Matt warns business owners not to treat their business lawyer like a vending machine by disappearing for months and then demanding a contract in a week.
00:24:45 - The best legal advice is contextual. When a lawyer understands the business owner's priorities, direction, and sensitivities, the work can be tailored to the company instead of guessed at.
00:25:39 - Matt suggests relationship-building conversations, sometimes even off the clock, so counsel can better understand the business and flag risks earlier.
00:29:03 - To control costs, Matt says the first step is making sure you have the right lawyer. A friend who handled a DUI or car accident is not automatically the right person for business contracts.
00:31:51 - Vague contracts are dangerous contracts. Matt explains that if he cannot understand a phrase, a judge probably will not understand it either.
00:35:28 - To reach Matt Bracy, visit Scheef & Stone's website at solidcounsel.com, connect with him on LinkedIn, or email him directly.

Transcript

[00:00:11 - 00:01:11]
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Matt Bracy. He is a partner at Scheef & Stone. He is a former litigator and general counsel and now a business lawyer. He uses his background and perspectives to help both domestic and international businesses. And one of the things that I love that Matt said is he believes a lot of business owners are not purchasing legal counsel in the right way and it's costing them too much money. And for most people to have a small to medium size business, you don't have deep pockets for legal expenses. And so I think this is gonna be a really good episode for that. Matt, welcome.

[00:01:11 - 00:01:17]
Matt Bracy
Thank you, thanks Craig, thanks for having me. Yeah, when we first connected, we just started chatting

[00:01:17 - 00:02:32]
Craig Andrews
and I think we went an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I mean, it was just crazy. We probably should have just turned the microphone on at that point and captured it because it was really, really good. But I just, I really appreciate in my conversations with you, I really appreciate your approach to law because I mean, for me, I started, when I moved to Austin, I worked for about 500 person company but we, our law firm was Fulbright & Jaworski and they pulled me into some lawsuit they had going on and was just stunning the amount of money we spent on that. I mean, stunning. And we lost the case, which made it even more painful. But it was a stupid case to prosecute. And so I think that's one of the big challenges a lot of small and mid-sized businesses have. I mean, I know I still deal with this. I shy away of, I probably should pull a lawyer on this but do I want to? And so that's something I hope we can cover. But before we go there, I was in the Marine Corps, department of the Navy, we hate each other except we hate the Army and the Air Force more.

[00:02:32 - 00:03:31]
Craig Andrews
We agree on that. And your dad, I think one of the things you told me that surprised me the most, your dad was 50 years old when you were born. That's right. Yeah, he sure was. Yeah, so I am now 61 and I'll let everyone else do the math, but that was when he was born. But yeah, my dad was a career Navy. He was 22 years in the Navy. And he joined the Navy before Pearl Harbor. And he got out after Korea. So you can imagine that wide swath of time in the military. And he was just a poor kid in the depression in Michigan. And he and his brother and their dad used to jump rail cars, to take the rail cars and to Detroit to look for work every day. And I think on one of those trips into Detroit, he saw a recruiting office for the Navy and thought, "Hey, here's a job." And it was really just a job, right?

[00:03:31 - 00:04:47]
Matt Bracy
And so he was able to join the Navy and do that. And his official MOS was he was a baker. And then of course, when the war breaks out, how it is in the Navy, you always have like your main job. And then sometimes you have your combat position in what you do. And dad volunteered for the PT boats, which were a new thing at the time. And it was all volunteer because it was very, very dangerous, basically on a plywood speedboat with a aircraft engine on the back. And zipping in and zipping out at night to destroy Japanese ships. And he was involved in the Battle of Guadalcanal and just crazy stuff. But, you know, it's typical of my dad and something I admire about him. He passed away when I was six, unfortunately. So a lot of my memories are brief or stories I've inherited from other people around him, whatever. I'll take it. But one of the things, there was, you know, my dad's picture and story is in "Life Magazine" from the PT boats. And there was a book written about him and his water and where his name is all over it.

[00:04:47 - 00:06:05]
Matt Bracy
In our house, there was never a big display case with the "Life Magazine" article or never like a place of honor for the book. They were on the top of a shelf like next to towels and bedding. (laughs) Wow, that's my dad. So just a very humble guy. And, yeah, so very, very proud to be his son. Wow. Yeah, I imagine some of that is, you know, I don't know a lot of people that come back from war and really want to talk about it. It's just a horrible thing. Obviously, that was a war that we, you know, we'd run out of other choices to avoid that. But, oh my goodness. Yeah. And you also tell me that you were the first, your generation's first generation, your family, good to college. Yeah, so my mom never graduated from high school. And my dad did graduate from high school. But, you know, my brother and sister and I all went to college. And, you know, so my brother and sister are substantially older than me. And, you know, so for the most part, I was raised by a single mom, widower widow,

[00:06:05 - 00:07:22]
Matt Bracy
who, you know, had never graduated from high school. So it was a little bit of a different perspective. And she did her very best. But, one of the things she always encouraged me was to really look ahead to a, to go into college and to try to better myself as we say. Of course, college is not the only way to do that. But, it was always a matter of her telling me, you know, when you go to college, you can do this. And never, if it was never a question for me that I would go because just the words she chose and the way she emphasized that. And from a position of not really knowing herself, I mean, there was no example. You know, she couldn't say, you know, when I was in college, I did it, no, no, she didn't. And yet, she still kind of encouraged that and encouraged me to be the best I could be. I definitely remember this is something I remember my father saying was, it really doesn't matter what you do in life, just be the best you can be at it. That sort of blue collar, get it done kind of attitude really pervaded a lot of my early memories. Well, not only did you go to college, you went to law school and, you know, there was,

[00:07:22 - 00:07:59]
Matt Bracy
I mean, for me, I'm the first in my family to get a graduate degree. I have to admit, part of the reason I went, you know, for the graduate degree was just to be the first. It was kind of that desire, you know, to kind of push the ball forward. Yeah. But it's wild. It's, you know, I mean, since I went to college, well, I went to college was a lot more affordable, even inflation adjusted and it was a lot more useful. I'm not super impressed with what some of the things

[00:07:59 - 00:08:45]
Craig Andrews
are thrown in the curriculum these days. You know, it seems like, you know, when I was a bad student in high school and I had to go to community college first to get my, you know, when I was in the Marines to get my grades up. But one of my professors there, I'll never forget this. He said the purpose of a liberal arts education is not to teach you to do a specific skill. It's to equip you to do anything. Yeah. And it was really about teaching people how to think. And I feel like at least my observation is, today's graduates have been studying to the test. And if you hit them with something that's unstructured, unexpected, it really throws them off. Yeah, I see that.

[00:08:45 - 00:10:03]
Matt Bracy
And I think it depends on what they're studying to. It depends on what they're being sort of fed as the purpose of college. Like you said, I mean, I've got two kids in college right now myself, right? And so my oldest, my daughter, Catherine, is studying acting. And I told her from day one, so I don't ever let anyone criticize you for what you're studying. There's always gonna be some voice that says, even at a cocktail conversation with me, right? Like, oh, you know, it's gonna equip her well to sell, you know, book, store to door or whatever the joke is, you know, today. That was what we used to say about English majors back in the day, right? Yeah, but I don't buy that. And I agree with what you said. It's about expanding your mind. It's about learning how to think. It's about all those things that make you a better human being and leader and business leader and whatever. Now, she does wanna be an actress. And so this is a little bit like her trade that she was learning. But even if she didn't, I don't care. And so then there's my son who is just finished his first year of college. And he is a business data analytics major. I have, I'm sure that's great. I've zero idea what that is to be honest. But what does he wanna do after college?

[00:10:03 - 00:11:10]
Matt Bracy
He wants to be a firefighter. Oh, wow. And so the kids have taken my advice to heart and they are, they're studying what they wanna study because they think it's gonna make them better. And they don't link that necessarily to what work they do later on. And I love it. Well, there's a couple observations I've had. One is, it seems like one of the fields, how should I word this? There's more lawyers not practicing law as a percentage. Then I think almost any other formal training. And one of the things that strikes me, the other thing that strikes me about law is why admire is the way that lawyers solve problems, the way they break down problems. And it's like the discipline of studying law, of becoming a lawyer, teaches you a mindset that you see some going to journalism, you see some going to other fields, but it's more what equips them is actually having that,

[00:11:10 - 00:12:28]
Craig Andrews
that discipline that comes through law school of consuming knowledge, breaking down problems and figuring out how to approach them. Yeah, you know, it's heavy on logic. And that's really how I ended up in law school, to be honest with you, right? So I get through college and, you know, because of my circumstances, I had to work while I went to school. And, you know, it was not necessarily fun. And when I got through, I was like, I'll never go to school again. Yeah, I'm done, you know. And then I got a job. I was a university administrator at the college where I went to school. They offered me a job, a career level job in University of California, which was nice. And it paid a decent salary at the time, and the benefits are great. And there's this trajectory you're supposed to be on for your career and whatever. I was so bored. I was bored for a couple reasons. Number one, because I'd always worked any gun to school, I had no idea what you normal people did in the evening. And so I got off work at five, and I was like, what on earth do you do with all this time? I have no idea, right? So my girlfriend was like, oh, you know, you should go join a gym and just work out after work. Okay, so that takes an hour.

[00:12:28 - 00:13:10]
Craig Andrews
What now, what do you do with all this time? So I was very bored. But in that boredom, what I would do, of course, as any young man would as I would hang out at her place, and she was studying for the LSAT. She always wanted to be a lawyer. And so what I'm doing is I'm looking over her shoulder at the questions for the practice LSAT. And I'm like, oh, oh, I love this. Oh, I know this. And so it's because it's so logic-based, I was like, oh, I could do this, you know? And if the LSAT is a true diagnostic to determine whether or not you fit in that, it was working. And so with her encouragement, I took the LSAT,

[00:13:10 - 00:14:25]
Matt Bracy
and I just took a one step at a time. She's like, oh, just take the LSAT. You don't have to go to law school. I said, I can't go to law school. I can't afford it, whatever. I'm not going to just take the LSAT. So I did, and I did pretty well. And then she's like, oh, just apply to some schools, right? So I did and applied to some schools, and then I got into a bunch of them, and now it's like, oh, now what do you do? And so I was at the moment where I had to make a decision. But the point of it was though, the testing and the lead up was all very, very truly diagnostic. So it told me this is something I can do. And boy, that's been true to this day. I feel so lucky to have stumbled into law. I love being a lawyer. I love what I do. I love being a business lawyer, right? So I'm a corporate business lawyer. So I do contracts and I do general business advice to companies like general counsel service, and I do M&A work, okay? And I love it. I love the challenge. I love the problems are complex. And I also love the fact, frankly, that I'm not dealing with somebody going to jail or staying out of jail. I'm not dealing with somebody losing their life or a limb or whatever in a car accident or divorces. You've got forbid. I don't have any of the emotionally impactful stuff

[00:14:25 - 00:15:40]
Matt Bracy
to deal with. I deal with businesses and numbers and stuff like that, which is cool. But I love it. I feel it's such an honor to be where I am in my career and just happy to do it and happy to help business owners. Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, and when you were talking about that not having to deal with family law, 'cause there's some horrible things that come out there. Yes. The, yeah, I remember when I was in the Marines, there was a Marine that worked for me that ended up going to jail. And he was a bad Marine before all that came up, but his, he told his lawyer, he listed me as a character reference. And I sat down with his lawyer and I was like, I don't know why he put me as a character reference. I think he's a scumbag. And I was like, if you wanna put me on the stand, that's fine, but I'm gonna speak the truth. And it was funny, I ran into his lawyer out in town. This was over in Japan, and I ran to his lawyer out in town after the case was over. And I chatted with him a little bit and he said, yeah, he said, yeah, he was a scumbag. He said, but when I'm representing him, I can't,

[00:15:40 - 00:16:58]
Matt Bracy
I can't let my mind go there. And, and that's, that's hard. I mean, I have a lot of respect for people who understand they have a duty to represent their clients, even in places where they disagree with them. Now, that was, that case involves statutory rape. I would imagine for you, you run into that as well, but not as severe, you're not, you're not in criminal law, but I would imagine you have clients that make a choice and you're sitting there and you probably try to give them options very diplomatically. I always respect the lawyers that I work with have an amazing ability to deescalate things. And I'm sure inevitably you have clients there like, now we're going to go this way and they're ignoring every bit of your advice and then you have a choice to make. Yeah. And how do you process that? Yeah, it's a good question. And I speak to a lot of the younger lawyers in the firm about that kind of a thing. And it takes a little discipline to remember what your role is. Okay. As a business lawyer, we have a fiduciary duty to our client, right? And so what that means is I am required by law to put my client's interest above my own, okay?

[00:16:58 - 00:18:14]
Matt Bracy
So I can never choose something because it's going to benefit me more than the client, right? So I can't say, oh, we should, we should sue this guy because you know, whatever, because I know this can generate a lot of fees and even though the outcome may not be good. So you have to be very, you have to put that forward in your mind. You have to always remember client, client, client, not me, okay? So that's number one. But number two is remembering that you're not the wizard who gets to swoop in and say magic, legal words, mostly in Latin. And then everyone says, oh yes, let's do that, right? You're an advisor. That means that I'm not making the decision. I'm helping the person who's making the decision by equipping them with facts, consequences, law. And then they get to make the decision. And I have to sometimes remind my clients of this because they're like, I don't know, Matt, what do you think? It's like, that's fine to ask me when I think. I said, but don't think that I'm the one who's going to make all the calls. That's your job. I'm there to advise you. And if I advise you, hey, don't do X 'cause it's really risky. And this happens all the time. Okay, yeah. Like it's happened this week, if today's Wednesday. Yeah, it's happened this week. You know, I'll say, hey, look, you know,

[00:18:14 - 00:19:29]
Matt Bracy
I don't think you should do this because of these reasons and they say, okay. And they say, well, I think I'm going to do it anyway. That's fine. If you understand what I've told you, you understand the risk, let's move on. I don't have any ego attached to it. Let's go to the next thing. I'm going to help you down this path the best I can, but it's not my call and I'm not the wizard who gets to decide how things happen. But that's an important relationship, right? Clients get to make bad decisions all the time, right? Seldom, is it ever like something very dramatic? Like it's illegal or whatever, right? Which I would have different obligations about. But it's usually like, hey, this is just a bad choice. Okay, I'll give you a really easy example. If I've got a client who comes to me and they're going to set up a new business and this happens a lot and they're with their best friend, they've been best friends since they were five, okay? We're going to start this business together. We're going to be 50, 50 owners. Cool. And so I run them through some questions like, okay, well, 50/50 ownership is fine. How are you going to make decisions? 50/50, we're going to make equal decisions on everything. Okay. That's a bad idea. Here's why. It can lead to what's called deadlock, which is where no decision can be made

[00:19:29 - 00:20:41]
Matt Bracy
because it requires both of you to make it. So let's talk about ways we can get around deadlock, okay? And they listen sometimes, they're like, I don't know if I want to go there because we're always going to agree with them. Okay. Next step, let's talk about a way that you can unravel this if you want, right? So that means one of you wants to get out or one of you wants the other one out. What do we do? Because in the absence of an agreement, there's no easy way to do that, okay? And again, they say, oh, now we've been best friends since we were five and that's never going to happen or whatever. It's like, okay, you understand that that's a risk. You understand that there's a mechanism put in place to make it easier and you're telling me you don't want to do it. Oh, yeah, we don't want to do it. Okay. You've understood, you know what's going on, right? And then unfortunately, six months later, they come to me, one of them comes to me and says, yeah, it's not working and I need to get rid of this guy. I could be, thankfully, I wake up in the morning being a very optimistic person. I mean, right side, optimistic guy because otherwise it could be very daunting because you see the bad side of all these business decisions

[00:20:41 - 00:20:44]
Craig Andrews
too often, but that's an example, right?

[00:20:44 - 00:22:01]
Matt Bracy
My job isn't to demand something or tell you you're crazy if you don't do this or whatever, it's just to explain. I explain it, here's the risk, here's what's going on. What do you want to do? I want to do this separate from what you said. Okay, cool, let's go do it and let's make it the best we can make it. So that's my role, that's my vision of the role of a business lawyer at least. You know, that kind of comes into my world. I talk a lot about autonomy, that if you want people to make decisions they're going to stick to, don't take their autonomy in the process. You know, set it up so their decisions are fully autonomous decisions. And it's Jerry Springer, you remember him? Yeah, sure. Yeah, he talked about the word he used in his book was power, it was all about giving the power. You know, he was able to get what he wanted by giving the jury the power to make the decision and he of course was exceptionally good at that. But that's what I'm hearing you talk about is, you know, at the end of the day, it's the client's decision. And I just, I can imagine that's really hard when you see people making bad decisions and you want them to help them avoid that future pain. But at the end of the day, it's still their decision. That's right, and you have to know your role.

[00:22:01 - 00:23:16]
Matt Bracy
I mean, you know, at the top of the discussion today, you mentioned like the right role for a business lawyer. And so I've talked about that a little bit. I wanted to go into just one more thing about that. And this all kind of feeds into each other, right? So the idea of how you can offer good advice and sometimes they take it, sometimes they don't, that's fine, but they have to be receptive to it. If they're not receptive to hearing you, if they shut down immediately, that's a break in the good relationship between an attorney and client. Because the attorney-client relationship is based on trust, right? So my clients have to trust me because what I'm giving them advice on is the most important thing in their world often, aside from their family. But it is like their family a lot of times. My clients are not publicly traded companies, right? I'm a middle market guy, okay? That means my clients are founder owners. These are typically not businesspeople. They are engineers, salespeople who just had a really great idea or they came into a really great idea or somehow here they are and they just keep on working

[00:23:16 - 00:24:21]
Matt Bracy
and they're doing really well because it's a great idea. And they wake up one day and they've got 200 or 250 employees and they're just going gangbusters. They don't have a lot of support and that's where I want to come in, right? So I have to have their trust because they have to, to trust what I'm saying is best for their business and their course they're going on. But the, and we could talk a lot about the way trust is established or whatever, right? But one thing in particular that I try to counsel people on is like use your business lawyer correctly, which means make sure that they are plugged in to your thinking, your priorities, whatever, right? So the analogy I tend to use is and don't treat your business lawyer like a vending machine. All right, so if you imagine a vending machine and you walk up to it whenever you want to and you put a couple bucks in and you press A4 and you get a chocolate bar, okay? You've put the money in, you've gotten the product, you want everything's cool. Some people do try to treat their business lawyer that way.

[00:24:21 - 00:25:38]
Craig Andrews
So no communication for a long amount of time. And then an email that says, hey, I need a contract that does this. I need it in a week, you know, produce it for me, okay? That is the functional equivalent of the vending machine. All right? The problem with, and it's possible to do that and it happens all the time, okay? But the product you get is going to be seasoned by what? It'll be my experience and my sensitivities or my guess about yours, okay? I would prefer to be yours. So if I'm more in touch with you and I'm aware of what you're doing in the business and where you're trying to go, whatever, I can apply your sensitivities more and try to tailor it better for your circumstance. That's the highest best use. So that requires a lot of touch and this goes back to something else you mentioned is of course everyone's afraid of cost, right? Yes, there's our expensive. Lawyers are expensive. Easy for me to say, but business owners probably need to like figure in it's a cost of doing business. It's like, you know, a business license or whatever else, right? Easy for me to say and I get that and I don't, you know, I know it's expensive, but doing it right

[00:25:38 - 00:26:55]
Craig Andrews
and having that contact is important. And what I'll do and what a bunch of business lawyers will do is I'll tell my clients, look, if you want to sit around and just chat with me about how your business is going, what's happening, what your plans are, buy me lunch, buy me a drink, okay? The clock is not on, I find that the offensive when someone charges for lunch, but the clock is not on and we'll chat and I'll emerge from it knowing more about where you are and where your mindset is and what's important to you. And I can even challenge you sometimes. Like, oh, you're thinking about expanding here. Well, have you thought about this potential risk? Oh, and we can have a dialogue about it. Very like, you know, and off the clock, which I like. I like the fact that we can do that and just sort of help and advance the ball. So anyway, that's some of my views on how to use your business lawyer better. I love that. I do the lunch thing when it's a client that I don't want. Like an industry, I won't work. I deal a little bit in non-profit and I realized that's not a happy place. You know, there are people do marketing for non-profits and do very well, but it's been a bad experience for me. And so, you know, I run into people that they're like,

[00:26:55 - 00:28:10]
Craig Andrews
"Well, can't you help me out?" And my answer is always, I tell you what, buy me lunch and I'll tell you it, I'll answer any question you want over the course of lunch. And that's kind of my way of kind of helping them out 'cause I don't want to leave them helpless but I also don't want to take them on as clients. And I like what you're doing, how it's, yeah, you're, it's not a therapist, you're not sitting there, running the clock, listening to somebody just pour out their heart, you're like, "Hey, let's go to lunch "and we'll just talk about there." I love that. Yeah, it works pretty well and it's, I don't know, it's a better way to deepen the relationship also, you know? But like you said though, I take my job very seriously, right? I take the responsibility of my job very seriously. And that extends to anyone who contacts me. So someone calls me out of the blue and they say, "Oh, I got your name from someone "and I've got this problem and it's something "I cannot help with," right? 'Cause it's not something we do or something I know about. I'm going to try to put them in the hands of a different lawyer and I'm going to try to see if I can't steer them in the right direction.

[00:28:10 - 00:29:21]
Craig Andrews
For no reason other than the fact that they reached out to me in trust and I honor that. And I'm very serious about making sure that someone who reaches out to me in trust is treated with respect and helped in some way, if I can. Yeah. Let's talk briefly about other ways that people can keep costs down, you know? 'Cause if you're dealing with Fulbright & Jaworski as I was when I moved to Austin, man, that clock runs fast. Yeah. And, you know, just fast. And so how can normal businesses, non-public businesses that don't have millions of dollars sitting around just waiting to pay their lawyer, how do they keep costs down? Yeah, they need. Sure. The first thing is make sure you've got the right lawyer, right? When I step into representing a business, you know, I will ask, well, who's representing you now or who has? 'Cause I want to just understand where they're coming from and if they've had bad experience, I want to know what it is. And so, you know, more often than not,

[00:29:21 - 00:30:40]
Matt Bracy
it's either no one or it's my friend Joe from down the street who, you know, he helped me with the DUI one time and then, you know, I had that car accident so he helped me with that and then he said he could help me put together some business contracts. Okay. And I'm sure Joe's a great guy, but he's not a business lawyer. And there's a difference in specializing. And business law itself is a very large umbrella. So there's a lot of categories within business. I'm a corporate guy, you know, I was a litigator before, I was a business litigator, so I was trying cases based on contracts. You know, there's real estate and there's intellectual property. All these things are in employment. All these things are subcategories of business law. But finding a business lawyer or firm that can help you is really a key because you're not going to waste time and efforts. And it's almost like, so today, right? What happens a lot is clients come to me and they think they're helping me by saying, oh, I need a contract to do this thing. And I had AI produce this rough draft for you to look at, right? And I, you know, I get where they're coming from and I understand the pain, I get it. But more often than not, it's a matter of, you know, I could take what they have and just redline it a lot.

[00:30:40 - 00:31:55]
Matt Bracy
So it looked like it was been bled on. Or I could just use my documents that I use that I'm familiar with and I try to gently guide it that way in terms of efficiency. But, you know, so finding the right business lawyer, getting them engaged early sounds counterintuitive, right? So I'm going to save money by spending money early. Okay, what does that mean? Well, hopefully making the right choices in terms of, let's take the easiest example, contracts, right? So in my world, everything is driven by contracts, right? The contract between my client and its vendors, the contracts between my clients and its employees or contractors, my client and its customers, right? All those different facing contracts dictate the way the relationship between those parties is going to go. Having the right language, the right contract in place can save money down the road. There's nothing uglier than trying to litigate a case based on a bad contract, right? And bad can mean it's vague, okay? In contract world, vague is bad, okay?

[00:31:55 - 00:33:13]
Matt Bracy
And I always tell people when I'm going through a contract, it's like, look, I don't understand what this phrase means. And if I don't understand it, a judge is not going to understand it. Okay, so we have to make sure we put things in words that are clear and concise, not only the choice of words, but the relationship, right? So if you break it down to its basics, and you say, you're going to do something, I'm going to do something, and here's the end result, and here's what happens if it goes wrong, and here's the kind of promises we're going to make to each other. That's the contract, okay? If you keep thinking about it in simple terms, you and I talked about simplifying language earlier, you keep talking about in simplified terms that's going to zero you in on what you need, right? And emerging from that whole process with a really clear contract will avoid a lot of problems down the road. Now again, easy for me to say. So what we're talking about is investing money now to save money down the road. Well, a lot of business owners are like, yeah, that's all great, but I don't have very much money right now. So I'm going to write to you. And so you can try to scale it. So it's like, we don't have to draft the perfect IBM level contract at first, but let's make sure it's all those things

[00:33:13 - 00:34:29]
Matt Bracy
I'm talking about for a pretty efficient amount of money. And that's another thing that can help is with a business law firm like ours, and we're like 65 lawyers in three offices in North Texas. So we have a bench of younger lawyers we can use. And so I can say, well, look, here's the deal. I'm going to use a junior lawyer who's very competent that bills at a lower rate to do the majority of this. And then I'm going to review it. So my time will be limited, their time will be maximized, and that will make a more efficient product for you. And this goes back to, so I was general counsel, I was in-house for 13 years, started as a litigator, I went in-house. And when you're in-house, I was in three different states, three different companies in three different roles, kind of. But my final role was I was general counsel for this finance company. And as general counsel, you are the client. So I employed 75 law firms around the country to handle lawsuits we had going on and other things going on. So I was the consumer of legal services. And so I get the sensitivities.

[00:34:29 - 00:35:28]
Matt Bracy
I get like, look, I'm sure this was great, but I can't pay for five lawyers I never met to review the same brief. Okay, I mean, I get all that. And I get the fact that in the company that I send my bill to, they got to pass it around, right? So whoever hires me has to pass it to the CFO who's going to look at it and go, what is this, right? So I understand that sensitivity and can kind of help guide the client to the best, most efficient path, recognizing that we're not going to, you know, create the greatest written document of all time for every single deal. We're going to do the most efficient document we can do. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Matt, you know, we discovered last time we could just talk for hours. We don't have that much time. This has been so incredible. I just always enjoyed my conversations with you.

[00:35:28 - 00:35:30]
Craig Andrews
How can folks reach you?

[00:35:30 - 00:36:05]
Matt Bracy
I'm sure. So my firm is Scheef & Stone. Our website is not that. Our website is our firm motto, which is solid counsel. So it's www.solidcounsel.com. I'm on there and LinkedIn and all the other good socials I'm on and happy to talk to anybody about anything. And Scheef is spelled S-C-H-E-E-F. Is that right? S-C-H-E-E-F, that's right. All right.

[00:36:05 - 00:36:08]
Craig Andrews
Well, Matt, thanks for coming on leaders and legacies.

[00:36:08 - 00:36:09]
Matt Bracy
Yeah, Craig, thanks so much for having me.

[00:36:09 - 00:36:11]
Craig Andrews
I do appreciate our conversations always

[00:36:11 - 00:36:16]
Matt Bracy
and I do feel like we could talk for hours. Indeed. Thank you.