hire attorney to review rental agreement

[Stace Hill]

should you have a local attorney review your first rental agreement?  app $400-600

thank you

[Robert Taylor]

Oh man, like this should even be a question! Heck yeah you ought to take an attorney's advice into consideration when drafting a rental agreement and I'd HIGHLY recommend getting some referrals on that as well, you want one who's well versed LOCALLY in what flies and what doesn't, which here as was explained to myself and at least one other BP member attended, plus many more (and a rather "famous" BP member at that who I recognized from her profile pic, but she certainly seems to know what she's doing with rentals and was at the same event, a "landlord bootcamp" where the local attorney who I've been told is THE BEST landlord atty to call in a crisis taught the ins and outs of this stuff) but part of what he explained was how in Milwaukee Cty the judiciary of this county of nearly 1M residents which ranges from very poor areas to very wealthy areas has mostly very liberal, left leaning judges who generally ALWAYS find any reason they can to take the tenant's side and often give some awful tenants "one more chance" much to the landlord's chagrin. Neighboring county to the west, Waukesha Cty, with about 400k residents and ranging from some middle class, much upper middle and some very high end, so in general a far more affluent county has a much more conservative, right leaning judiciary that in the EXACT SAME CASE where in Milwaukee Cty you'll likely lose as a landlord in court, you'll likely get an eviction or whatever remedy you're seeking right next door in Waukesha Cty-and of course, this is all based on the same state laws! 

In addition, I know that Madison, WI the 2nd largest city in the state, state capitol and quite famous for being a VERY left leaning city politically, has enacted many of its own additional landlord/tenant laws to the point where this same attorney recommends simply to "not bother investing" there in residential rentals. I'd be nervous as heck walking into court trying to get them to enforce some contract I'd drawn up myself in ANY of these places, but especially in the "anti-landlord" areas. You could end up with an even bigger problem on your hands!