At what stage do I need to hire a specialist franchise lawyer?

Before you enter into the franchise agreement if you are a franchisee, and before you start offering franchises if you are a franchisor. Clearly you should not rush to instruct lawyers because of the cost of doing so. In other words, you should only approach a lawyer when you have a clear idea concerning your intention to proceed, otherwise the costs you will incur will be wasted.Lawyers need to be instructed before you make any serious mistake, and generally serious mistakes are made when contracts are entered into without legal advice. It is fundamental that you obtain advice from a lawyer that knows about franchising. Inevitably, solicitors will claim to be experts in franchising when they are not and what happens is that they learn about franchising at your expense or adopt an approach that simply doesn’t reflect good practice in franchising.To avoid this happening you should always access the British Franchise Association’s website, which lists affiliated lawyers. No all lawyers on the list have an enormous amount of experience of franchising and, indeed, some lawyers specialise in advising franchisees rather than franchisors (and vice versa), so you do need to try to obtain information from others about your proposed choice of lawyer.