Hi everyone,

Did anyone ever hire an attorney for helping in the lease contents?

I usually read the commends in this forum (a helpful site), and made up the lease ( a lot lease forms out there..)

I have no problems in the last decades, but right now, the current tenant is getting to my nerve, I need to prepare the legal paper to protect my property.

However, I truly had no good experiences with attorneys, other than they sure were "greedy".

Can you share your experiences with me? when I look for an attorney who specializes in the lease, in this way, he can just give me the legal advise from the lease, and ping point if or if not that I can modify the lease in the middle of the term (the lease ends in Aug.)

and also prepare the possibility of eviction (never done it before.)

I guess I will have to spend the legal fee and pay a lawyer to get me some advices. But, how to find the one who will not just want a BIG fee with small service. They charged you an hour for a 15- minutes in person, and they all are so busy.

Thanks.

If it was just a question of "drafting a lease", most TX attorneys I know have ProDoc to help them craft a solid document that will stand up in the courtroom. That's how mine started out... and as different things came up, the lease grew as I addressed different points more specifically. :o) For example, I found that "abandoned property" isn't really defined in TX law. It's no big deal when someone leaves behind a 10-year-old tv or a chin-up bar, but it can be a big deal when I got left with everything that didn't fit in her car when my tenant fled the state. :o)

Word-of-mouth is priceless in this situation. Poll members of your local LL association. Drop by the court and see if you can get names of local lawyer who does evictions in that court.

Find an attorney who specializes in representing landlords. A major metro area should have 2 or 3 firms specializing in this. They will each have "their" lease. It covers things from a legal perspective but not from a policy perspective (ELT, weekly payments, etc). They will have a flat fee to share their lease with you. That is far better than starting with "cheap" attorney who does not have specialized experience in landlord tenant law.

Another approach is to formulate a lease yourself, based on landlord problems that you have faced and would like to avoid in the future. Then, you can take it to a good landlord tenant lawyer (Don't forget to pay him) for him to review and advise you what will not work in court or what is not good practice, or make suggestions about how to solve these problems through the lease. There are too many "standard leases" out there. Many of them are mediocre, and the field needs new ideas and creativity.

You bet they do.

Qualified means they know what they are doing. There are lots of those, but of course, the best ones don't do silly trivial cases like landlord & tenant.

I started with a North Carolina Board of Realtors lease, because the magistrate knows and accepts that and it's based on existing NC law. I added to that paragraphs based on issues and ideas that have come up over the years, and advice from this forum and from the Conventions and Jeffrey's Boot Camp.