I was working with a client recently who was involved in several lawsuits that came as a result of buying businesses that didn’t work out well. While we were drilling down on some of the problems that caused the legal issues to appear I found out that he never engaged appropriate professional advice before he did the deal.
Some of the lack of appropriate advice was because of the intermediary he worked with while doing the deal. This intermediary represented both the buyer and the seller. I’ve written about this issue separately and won’t repeat myself here except to say that you should never, never, never allow an intermediary represent both sides of a deal.