Most startups find their first lawyers via their personal network.

“I know a guy who knows a guy.” — Saul Goodman

That’s how I started, too.

My co-founder and I got an intro to Orrick who temporarily delayed our first $10,000 of legal fees until we raised a seed round.

The first $10,000 included our company’s legal structure, incorporation, cap table, and our first convertible notes.

It was definitely more expensive than it had to be.

From there, my co-founder and I personally handled a lot of the duplicate work for our seed round raise, as well as drafted our own legal documents with help from free legal document templates online.

That saved us around $40,000 if we were going by Orrick’s rates ($200-$800/hour).

The other $60,000 was saved...