No one doubts the value of a medical checkup even though it may not be what we particularly want to do. Circumstances change and we don’t always realize that our health has changed in a way that should be sounding warning bells. A checkup is a reasonable bit of “insurance” that you are “good to go.” That same logic applies to a “legal” checkup. For most people, their income, business, employment or the relationships that they have with others can be just as important as the issue of bodily health in the right circumstances. If you have legal issues that you have not identified as potentially problematic, those issues can be devastating to your life or business plan. Yet, the most common responses to the question of whether a person has had a “legal” checkup are:

1. I will consult with legal counsel once it is apparent to me that I have a legal problem.

Consideration: But what if you could avoid that legal problem with a little bit of advance planning and a few changes? Most people have never had (and likely never will have) their house burn to the ground – but that does not stop them from buying fire insurance. It is a natural reaction to avoid the expense and time of a legal checkup. But that reaction may be counterproductive – the checkup may be one of your best investments . . . ever.

2. Why incur the expense? It will take away from time when I could be enjoying myself or actually making income and not spending money.

Consideration: By that reasoning, you should also avoid medical checkups. If the issues you do not identify ultimately result in less enjoyment or enjoyable time, have you paid a large price to address what would have been a small problem? Income and expense are just opposite sides of the same coin . . . what matters is not what you earn but what you keep. Time and again, we have seen hard-earned income wiped out by a single adverse legal event. Ask any accountant – "negative income" (i.e., expense) is just as important as the positive income you generate.

3. Attorneys are always so negative and suggest problems and outcomes that are very unlikely to occur in the real world. 

Consideration: When did you lose your ability to separate wheat from chaff? Yes, it is the attorney’s job to point out risks that exist at many levels of probability but you are the one to weigh the advice that you get. Is it better to hear of risks that you don’t think are realistic or to be blind-sided by that which you never hear? It is important to realize that no one purposefully puts themselves in a situation to experience significant loss – it is always the uninformed person who starts the sentence with, “If only I had realized . . . .”