Hi :) I thought that was the purpose of the fund-raising that was a huge success. Proper accountants would have wrapped-up all these extra costs into the amount originally asked for. I kept quiet at the time because we were uncertain about whether that much could be raised. Hindsight is great like that.
The money is there for these extra costs and this is exactly what it was raised for. Skimping on these costs could end up costing TDF a LOT more if not done well enough first time. I thnk it's also worth looking around for better qualified lawyers with more experience in this area of law rather than just going for the ones with the cheapest quote. Regards from Tom :) ________________________________ From: Florian Effenberger <flo...@documentfoundation.org> To: steering-discuss@documentfoundation.org Sent: Fri, 12 August, 2011 16:34:21 Subject: [steering-discuss] contracting a lawyer for the foundation's set-up process Hello, as many of you know, we're right before filing the application for legally setting up the Foundation. For the process of filing, it is highly advisable to have a lawyer assisting us and acting as official point of contact. Not only will some legal topics come up, but also being represented by a lawyer greatly helps in being perceived as serious entity by the authorities. Among the lawyer's tasks there will be the communication with the authorities, acting on legal questions, and preparing the filing documents in a way they fit the legal requirements. Unfortunately, German law makes it very complicated for lawyers to act pro bono on these kinds of things (which is different to e.g. the US), so we plan to officially contract a lawyer to assist us. In order to have legal advice for the process, which might take a few weeks, I'd like to ask the steering committee to approve a sum of 3.000,- € in total. This is the sum one of our preferred lawyers has mentioned to us, and given that several hours of work for professional services have to be invested, I consider that amount very well spent. Depending on the lawyer and the services used, hourly rates of about 50-150 € are fairly normal in Germany, and I expect the process to take a few hours of time to be completed, especially given the "speciality" with the membership we have come up with. Thoughts welcome. Florian -- Florian Effenberger <flo...@documentfoundation.org> Steering Committee and Founding Member of The Document Foundation Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108 Skype: floeff | Twitter/Identi.ca: @floeff -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
