# Managing the relationship How you manage the relationship is very important and too many advisor relationships don’t live up to their potential, leaving people underwhelmed or disappointed. Advisors often treat the relationship as the responsibility of the company to “call me when they need me”, but producing a successful engagement should be the responsibility of both sides. Putting some work upfront and having a regular process to review the relationship should be discussed and clarified up front. #### Participate as much as possible Advisor can often be out of the loop with the latest information about the business, making it more difficult for them provide valuable advice. This can lead to the team spending most of the calls with business updates vs. getting advice and tangible action items. To avoid this so try to design in ways that you can provide updates about key developments in the company on a regular basis. Allowing the lawyer to participate in company meetings or having access to a company update or Slack channel can help you develop rapport and familiarity. This may be tough if you are short on time, but the idea incorporate the lawyer as you would a strategic advisor who needs to be kept up to speed all of the time. #### Respecting boundaries and maintaining scope Some founders will want to push past the time that lawyers have committed. Be sure to be respectful on their boundaries and the commitment, and make sure you discuss estimated time requirements of any tasks you may have upfront. Always try to manage expectations, and when things begin to creep beyond the original commitment, try to buck the trend early and either (1) create a new expectation and new engagement, or (2) get back to the original scale and scope. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://heycounsel.gitbook.io/startup-guide/the-details-how-heycounsel-works/the-engagement/managing-the-relationship.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.