Fredric Cohen

The opportunity to work with and represent creative people and the innovation they represent. It sometimes, happily, allows me to forget I’m a lawyer.

A great franchise attorney is simply a great human being who happens to have developed outstanding legal skills. Great person first, outstanding legal skills second. Me, I’m a work in progress.

• Consistent with my answer to the previous question, I would ask: “What is the single most important thing to you?”
• The answer will tell you whether the prospective counsel is a lawyer first or a great human being first, and, if the latter, it will tell you a lot about her as a person.
• I recently interviewed a candidate and asked her that question.
• Her unhesitating answer: “My daughter.”
• No BS about work, accomplishment, achieving, being a go getter, building a practice, etcetera.
• Honesty and solid values.
• We hired her that day.

It has to bring value every day to the franchisee who pays you to use it and to the consumer who is attracted to it. The ‘every day’ part means it must continue to evolve, grow, change, adapt — for five years, ten years, decades. That requires relentless effort and unending investment and reinvestment of resources. Look at a few recently — and remarkably — resurgent brands — KFC, Domino’s, Arby’s. That didn’t just happen. Someone willed it and committed the resources to enable it.

COVID-19, without question. How will brick and mortar concepts deal with reduced foot traffic? What safety measures might be implemented for delivery, and will the consumer have confidence in it?

From a purely legal standpoint, how will causation and the corresponding liability play out with the spread of the disease? Will franchisors be able to withstand the pressure/temptation to involve themselves in their franchisees’ employment relationships, which they have been — or should have been — meticulous about avoiding, when franchisees’ employees become ill? Everything else will fade into relative insignificance.