Legal Opinion Letter: Fill & Download for Free

A legal opinion letter of the kind you're looking at is really not anything that would be a defense against some form of litigation brought against you, but might be used to cross-claim malpractice on the part of the attorney who advised you.The important part about an opinion letter is that it provides you with the relevant law and a binding legal opinion of the lawyer who provided it to you. If that opinion is based on bad research or otherwise sloppy lawyering, then you may be able to file a malpractice claim if the situation falls apart further down the line.You're not going to get very far in court, however, by just saying "my lawyer said it was okay". Also, even if the lawyer is wrong, that doesn't automatically make it malpractice - even the best lawyer can interpret things different than any given judge might in the context of an actual case.If you want the opinion letter as a "shield" against litigation, you're seeking it for the wrong reason. If you want it as advice about how a document might be interpreted, how you would interpret and apply it in that way, and how risky taking a particular action or actions might be under that agreement.

During an annual review meeting, my boss admitted that the reason that I was being marginalized and left out of meetings, etc. for months was because the HR VP did not agree with a legal opinion I prepared.A bit of background: I was senior staff attorney for a hotel development company which was also operating two hotels whilst proceeding with redevelopment. In my role, I advised on a myriad of HR-related matters. At the time, the company was having difficult relations with a labor union. I was the face of the company in dealing with this union’s representatives. A decision was taken by the company to terminate staff. I did not agree on the approach and warned about repercussions. There were serious repercussions, but that’s another story. Apparently, my advice was not welcomed.Note, my boss never said that the HR VP felt that my legal opinion was unsound, only that she didn’t agree with it.Now, why would what my boss said lead to my resignation? When I joined her in her office for my annual review, one of the first things she asked me was whether I was happy, because it didn’t seem that I was. Being the frank person I was, I replied that it’s difficult to be all bubbly and happy when it was obvious that my role was being diminished without explanation. That is when she disclosed the reason. I was stunned.What struck me was the fact that she was the General Counsel and there was no way in hell she should have allowed the HR VP to manipulate her in that way. Like I said, at no time did my boss say that the HR VP felt my legal opinion was unsound; so, as an attorney and the General Counsel, my boss had a duty to me to examine my legal opinion and at the least, discuss the HR VP’s statement with me. She also had a duty to protect me as a professional as I could not have prepared an opinion without reference to the General Counsel. She failed me! I knew that I could no longer work under her.As I left the meeting with her, I resolved to find another job. This meeting was in March and I found a new position at the start of May. Once I secured the new job and had signed the employment contract, I prepared a one sentence resignation letter and submitted it to my boss. Immediately upon realizing that I was resigning, she blurted out: “I knew you were going to resign! I just knew it after our meeting!” I just smiled and left her office. The weight that had been on my shoulders just lifted.

Quoting from the 2005 Report of The Corporations Committee of the Business Law Section of The State Bar of California "Legal Opinions in Business Transactions" (Page on americanbar.org):Commentators have defined the term “opinion” in a variety of ways, depending upon the context in which it is used. In business transactions, a legal opinion regarding a particular issue is customarily presented in an opinion letter and is widely understood to express the opinion giver’s professional understanding of the legal principles generally applicable to a specific transaction or applicable to a particular aspect of the transaction. Many commentators view an opinion letter as a document that provides the opinion recipient with the opinion giver’s professional judgment about how the highest court of the jurisdiction whose law is being addressed would resolve the issues covered by the opinion letter on the date of the opinion. It is widely recognized that neither an opinion letter nor any particular legal opinion expressed in it is intended to be – or is – a guarantee of a particular outcome.