Hughes & Associates - Perspective

We want you to feel comfortable and confident working with Hughes & Associates. So we’d like to give you a closer look at our approach to the law.

Here, we offer you insight into how we conduct our practice. We also explain key legal issues. The more you know about the law and how it affects you, the better we can work together as a team to solve – and even prevent – legal problems.

Preventive Law
Hughes & Associates has taken a leadership role in providing preventive law for small businesses in Georgia. The ideas behind preventive law have been discussed in legal circles since 1950, but they are only now gaining momentum among leading legal thinkers. Below are essays that explain the evolution of preventive law and why it’s being hailed as the future of legal practice.

You can find additional information on the emerging trend toward preventive law by visiting the National Center for Preventive Law at the California Western School of Law.

Preventive law: An idea whose time has come
By Ed Dietel and Dick Lynch
From the March/April 1999 issue of Business Law Today

“Like an annual physical, an annual ‘legal audit’ can detect problems before those problems become major impediments that threaten the livelihood of one’s client….”

Preventive Law: Accomplishing a Revolution in Legal Practice
By Thomas H. Gonser
From the Winter 1998 issue of the Leadership and Management Directions newsletter,
published by the American Bar Association

“The public must be made aware that just as medical services are best sought on a preventive basis, legal services should be viewed in the same light.”

Preventive Law
By Stephen Coughlan, Faculty of Law, Dalhousie University
From the March 2002 issue of EPIIgram, published by the Canadian Bar Association

"’Preventive law’ is both old and new. The basic theory behind preventive law is that lawyers should where possible act in advance to prevent legal problems, rather than solve them after they arise.”

Preventive Law and Creative Problem Solving: Multi-Dimensional Lawyering (000k PDF)
By Thomas D. Barton and James M. Cooper

“… the lawyer anticipates the problem. In dealing with individual clients, the lawyer moves from being the reactive object of events to becoming the planful shaper of environments.”

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