> It's still the modern norm to use zero lawyers for small-scale transactions. It's great when that happens — and to make it work, there are a couple of condit

> It's still the modern norm to use zero lawyers for small-scale transactions. It's great when that happens — and to make it work, there are a couple of conditions that need to be satisfied. 1. All parties to a transaction need to know "the protocol," or "the drill," that is, how to conduct themselves as the transaction proceeds. (Imagine a complicated, multi-person dance where people could crash into each other if they didn't know the steps — or knew the steps but chose not to follow them.) Competent lawyers can provide the necessary knowledge, but they don't necessarily have to be the sole source of such knowledge: Various industries have developed standardized protocols for different categories of transaction. Examples: the Incoterms [0] and the ISDA Master Agreement [1], to name just two that come immediately to mind. 2. There's another reason parties use lawyers, and contracts, in their transactions: At bottom, companies are just people [2], and people can be perfidious; at some point The Other Side might choose to behave opportunistically. Contracts can help dissuade such behavior. For better or worse, lawyers are one of the principal groups who (might) know how to draft contracts to that end; good lawyers know how to do so without unduly getting in the way of the parties' business. Consider Alice and Bob, who agree to a contract on behalf of their employers Alpha Corp. and Bravo LLC. Each might be a fine, trustworthy, cooperative individual. But they're human; at some point they might be tempted — or pressured by colleagues — to cheat, or to seek unfair advantage, especially if circumstances were to change. Moreover, one or both of their successors Allen and Betty might be less trustworthy. This means that Alpha and Bravo's contract must guard against opportunistic behavior by one or both of them. Lawyers (can) help to negotiate contracts with appropriate roadblock language. Again lawyers aren't necessarily the sole source of the necessary knowledge; it just happens to have worked out that they're one of the main sources of it. Also, lawyers can be useful targets of finger-pointing by business people if a transaction doesn't work out as desired. That can be another, usually-unstated reason why people hire lawyers: To offload at least some of the risk of failure. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/isda-master-agreement.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/isda-master-agreement.a... [2] In the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney was pilloried for saying "corporations are people," but in one sense the criticism was unfair: If Romney had said "corporations are just people," his statement would have been far more defensible. (Disclosure: I'm a lawyer.)