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Is a lawyer "incompetent" if he defends a facially neutral law as constitutional?

How can a London-based contractor find a lawyer to review a contract governed by US law?

  • I am intending to contract for a US client, over the internet, from London where I am based. The contract I was presented with contains a clause that says the contract is governed by the law of Massachusetts. Some specialist accountants are able to advise on certain limited aspects of contracts, but what I really want is a lawyer. Unfortunately, my efforts so far to find a lawyer who could help me have failed: English lawyers trained in English law, are simply unable to help me at all, unless I can persuade the prospective client to accept English law as the governing law of the contract. (I don't know whether the client would accept that, because I haven't asked him.) It is not enough to simply find an American lawyer - they need to have passed the bar in the relevant state, in this case, Mass. Lawyers in London who have passed the Mass. bar do exist (I found some on http://Martindale.com), but my impression is they tend to do complex work for large corporates. I haven't found any who explicitly say they provide services to individual IT contractors. The website of the Mass. bar itself, has a feature to find a lawyer, but it assumes that the user is based in the United States, because it asks for a state and zip code. I have spent a lot of time on this and I could use some help. Would I need to call several law firms in MA? Would any of them be willing to undertake this kind of work, presumably via email or fax? Is there any other option?

  • Answer:

    Here is a link to the results of an Avvo search for contract lawyers in MA: http://www.avvo.com/search/lawyer_search?q=Contracts+%2F+Agreements&loc=ma You will have more than enough lawyers to choose from.

Dana H. Shultz at Quora Visit the source

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Both of the responses you have received so far are responsible and correct, no doubt. Let me offer you a decidedly more casual response. While there are some differences state to state, occasionally significant, for the most part, Contract interpretation from state to state is about the same and more often than not it does not necessarily require a specialist. An experienced Business attorney is going to go when there maybe differences is usually not a significant issue to identify The applicable law. I would begin with Dana's list but unless this is a large dollar or unusually complex relationship I would think most experienced business lawyer would do. If this is a $10,000 contract you want to avoid spending $2000 having it analyzed. On the other hand if it's $1 million contract you may wish to be very careful. In other words attempt to scale your legal service to the size and complexity of the deal.  Good luck, Peter! This is not offered or intended as legal advice. Consult a lawyer (which I understand is exactly what you're trying to do)

Peter Stanwyck

Find an English firm with a Legal Exchange - they will then manage the process but pass through legal advice directly related to and from the jurisdiction in question.

Kevin McDonnell

What type of contract is it?Employment contracts are reviewed for free at http://www.lawgeex.com, and other contracts are reviewed for a modest price.

Lauri Donahue

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