The way a firm staffs a project is critical to its success. It’s important to understand accessibility and to clearly define expectations around timelines, as there are many factors to consider beyond just cost.

I reached out to a small law firm that had a good reputation working with online businesses. Primarily IP related but they had M&A experience as well. The junior attorney I was working with had already worked on multiple deals from the same broker (Quiet Light) so he knew exactly where their template LOI and APA needed to be beefed up to provide me protection as the buyer. I felt very confident in his abilities within a few minutes on the first call. He's since moved on to another firm but next time I would be looking for a firm/attorney with deep experience in SMB M&A - especially if it's in an industry I'm not as familiar with. Cost is pretty much an afterthought. I think 5 years ago I was paying $350/hour. I would expect higher than that now due to inflation. I might balk at something like $1,000/hour, but my total legal fees were around 1% of the deal size. I wouldn't expect that to scale linearly as that was a smaller low-mid 6-figure deal. I would expect around $10k for a deal size in the low 7 figures.