Condo Media - May 2018 - 35

for attorneys to interact directly with
board members and establish a personal
relationship with them. "The attorney
needs to know who board members are
and how they think to advise them best;
and boards need a sense of who their
attorney is to be comfortable trusting
the advice they get."
With that goal in mind, he advocates
periodic "face time" between boards and
attorneys, but he also recognizes that
cost is a concern. Board members don't
think chatting periodically with the attorney "is a good use of the association's
money," Daddario notes, "and I can't
blame them for that."
His solution is to offer to attend one
regular board meeting per quarter free
of charge-an offer he extends to all his
association clients. This does not result
in Daddario investing countless hours of
non-billable time attending board meetings, as some of his colleagues warned.
"What usually happens is, after I've met
with a board a few times and established

a relationship, they discover they need me
less. They don't need me at the next quarterly meeting, but they are comfortable
calling me if something comes up."
Like Augustine, Daddario emphasizes
the importance of consistent communication with association boards. He also
agrees with her that it is often most efficient for attorneys and boards to convey
information through the manager. The
questions boards confront day-to-day
don't usually require him to communicate
directly with board members, Daddario
says. "But if it's a complicated issue, with
different scenarios carrying different risks
and different options, I will tell a manager
that I should talk directly to the board.
And the best managers understand that."
The relationship between managers
and association attorneys is also important, Daddario emphasizes. "We are on
the same team, we're serving the same
client and we have the same goal-we
want a happy client. That means we have
to work together."

The biggest problem he encounters
with association boards, Daddario says, is
a misguided and often counterproductive
effort to control legal costs by foregoing
legal advice when they need it. "A conversation with the association's attorney
about how to do something will cost a lot
less than the conversations you'll have
about problems that resulted because
you didn't get advice up front."
There are other ways for boards to hold
down their legal costs, Daddario says. Primary among them is simply reading the
governing documents. "Instead of paying
me to write a memo explaining what the
documents say," he notes, "board members can sometimes answer a question by
reading the documents themselves."
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May 2018

Condo Media - May 2018

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