This article is part of a seven blog series by McGrath and Spielberger on Legal Opinion Letters. Here are links to the other posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, … Part 5, Part 6, Part 7.
Writing a legal opinion letter is a significant professional responsibility for an attorney. The lawyer must exercise a high degree of care and diligence to ensure their opinion is accurate and well-reasoned. This often involves extensive research, reviewing complex documents, and sometimes, seeking clarification from other parties.
The lawyer has a duty to provide an honest and objective assessment. This includes identifying situations for which the answer is not entirely clear. Sometimes, the attorney is attempting to “prove a negative”, which can be very challenging. For example, a business client may have asked for a legal opinion letter to address the issue of “Proof that this business activity is not outlawed by North Carolina law.”
The attorney must be careful to avoid expressing opinions on matters which are beyond their professional competence or that are not supported by a thorough factual and legal investigation.
Ultimately, the attorney has to do the best they can to come to and express conclusions in which they are confident – and that others can rely on.
Please contact our law firm, McGrath and Spielberger, if you’re interested in a legal opinion letter.
The “owners” of a Limited Liability Company are traditionally referred to by attorneys as the LLC’s “Members”. It’s important to realize that (with some variation from state to state) there can be “Members” but also what may be referred to as “Economic Interest Owners”, and those are not the same thing. However, for the rest of this article and related articles, we’re just going to use the terms “Member” and “Owner” as synonyms, and Owner is going to mean someone who has full rights in the Company (mainly meaning having voting and economic rights).