The other day I was changing a flat on my car and the damn jack gave way causing the car to come crashing down on my left hand. Not only was there some serious bleeding, but it felt like my entire hand was crushed. Not to worry. After extricating myself from underneath the car I did a quick Google search and found out that the human hand has 27 bones consisting of carpals, metacarpals and phalanges. With a nice overview of a diagram of the bones, and some additional research on how to suture a wound, I went to work on the injury with some needle and thread, half a roll of duct tape and some super glue. No Doctor needed, and I prescribed myself some tasty Scotch which acted not only as a pain killer, but also (according to Google) a very reliable anti-septic.
Ok, ok, ok, as I hope you would know, the above story is not true (well, except for the Scotch part). Everyone knows that if you get hurt or sick you go to a Doctor, but for some reason day after day people go onto Google or into an Office Depot and decide that they can play Attorney, and in some cases the results can be just as bad if not worse then trying to be your own Doctor. I have been paid a lot of money over the years representing people who entered into agreements with others with “homemade” documents. Whether it’s a promissory note, deed, mortgage, sale and purchase contract, partnership agreement, or some other document, 9 times out of 10 the do it yourself varieties are not done properly. This means having to fix something that never should have been broken in the first place, and sometimes there is no fix to the problem created by the do it yourself agreement.
If you are going to loan money to someone, borrower money from someone, sell a property, lease a property, go into business with someone, or anything else where you want to make sure everyone knows their respective rights and obligations, it pays to have an attorney prepare the documents for you. Generally speaking you’re not looking at thousands of dollars for these types of basic agreements to be prepared by an attorney. In most circumstances you are looking at a couple hundred to a few hundred dollars to have such agreements/documents drafted by an attorney. It’s well worth the initial expense, and can save you thousands and thousands of dollars down the road.