Keeping The Law On Your Side

by Justine Kavanaugh-Brown

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Ilene Block sees something special in
small businesses. "When you work with small businesses, you're working with people that really care," she says.

Ilene Block's Small Business Legal Center provides legal services, flat fees and good advice to help small businesses survive the rough waters of corporate America.

Block, the founder of the Small Business Legal Center in Sacramento, California, should know. As a practicing attorney since 1984, she's worked with small businesses and extremely large businesses like Price Waterhouse. "When you work with small business owners, you're very aware that their businesses are everything to them. They take your advice seriously and you feel that you can really make a difference."

Block launched the Small Business Legal Center in mid-1997 after realizing that the needs of small business owners were not being met. "I have been working with small business owners for over ten years and I realized that even the most basic legal services were often priced outside their budgets. That got me thinking about how I could make the cost of legal services reasonable for the small business owner, yet still allow me to make a profit."

What Block did was come up with several legal service packages for small businesses, all available for a flat fee. Packages, which include services such as incorporations, state and federal trademark registrations, partnership agreements and estate planning, to name a few, have allowed her to charge between one-third to one-fifth of the fees charged by a standard law firm for the same service.

"I use experienced paralegals to do the majority of the work from forms I have created. I review the documents rather than doing the drafting work myself, which translates into lower costs for my clients."

"I have been working with small business owners for over ten years and I realized that even the most basic legal services were often priced outside their budgets."
Ilene Block, the Small Business Legal Center

Block says the idea of a flat rate has proved very appealing to small business owners, who are often on a tight budget. While lawyers that charge by the hour can rarely predict how much a service will cost, Block can tell business owners the exact amount before work begins. The Small Business Legal Center, which consists of Block, two contract paralegals and an additional contract attorney, also helps small businesses
make smart legal and business decisions. "Ilene's legal support was very affordable and right on target," says Jeff Curry, owner of the Curry Marketing Group in Sacramento. "Ilene provided us with answers before we made costly legal mistakes."

Block is currently working on another project that will benefit small businesses - a form of legal insurance, often called "pre-paid" legal services. Under the plan, businesses will pay a monthly fee. This fee will entitle the client to use an "on-call legal coach," obtain certain defined services over the contract period as well as significantly reduced rates on already low fees on non-covered services. If no services are used over a specified period of time, a portion of the monthly fee will be credited to the client's account to apply to legal services the client will need at a later date. Block says she hopes to begin offering that service by the beginning of 1998.

Block, who received an undergraduate degree in accounting and finance from California State University at Fullerton and a law degree from U.C. Davis, also plans to open more Small Business Legal Centers in other cities within the next several years. "We look at ourselves as on-call legal coaches," she says. "A lot of the time people see attorneys as expensive roadblocks. We want to be an asset to the small business owner, a member of the business team who actually helps the business owner save or make money."