The real cost of a partnership agreement

What the fee actually buys

A legal fee pays for expertise and time. The scope you agree on determines how much investigation, conversation, and drafting fits into the work. The number on its own doesn't tell you what you're getting.

The ranges below are illustrative US estimates, not quotes or a surveyed market average. Location, complexity, and the work included can change the fee substantially. Ask the lawyer what is included rather than treating these as hard price bands.

• Flat-fee or template-based work, roughly $500–$2,500 per lawyer: may cover a meeting or two and adapting a firm template to your business.
• Custom, conversation-led work, roughly $3,000–$10,000+ per lawyer: may include deeper conversations about expectations, difficult scenarios, and terms tailored to your situation.
• These scopes and prices can overlap. Work between the ranges isn't a missing category; it depends on the engagement.
• Partners may each need independent counsel. In that case, there is more than one legal bill.

The cheaper document isn't a bad document

A lawyer adapting a template may be doing exactly what they were hired to do. That can be useful, competent legal work. A smaller fee doesn't make someone a bad lawyer, and a larger fee doesn't guarantee a better partnership.

A document can be legally valid without resolving every expectation behind it. If the engagement is mainly drafting, it may not include hours of helping each partner explain what they've been assuming. That's a difference in scope, not a criticism of the lawyer.

The conversation is the expensive part

In Andrew's experience, unwritten assumptions and expectations about money, time, roles, and change were often behind the problems partners brought to his office.

Surfacing those takes careful questions and time to think. A tightly priced drafting engagement has limited room for that work. If you want a lawyer to lead those conversations, ask for that scope explicitly.

Why we built Stay Partners

Andrew Legrand built Stay Partners after 15 years as a business lawyer, including custom agreement work. He saw people who couldn't afford that process arrive later with problems they hadn't known to discuss at the start.

Stay Partners isn't another point on a line from cheap template to expensive lawyer. It brings the guided conversation behind custom work to more people. It doesn't provide the legal drafting or advice that a lawyer does. It's free during early access.

Use it with a lawyer, not instead of one

• Align first, privately and side by side, so you know where you agree and where you differ.
• Bring your written expectations to a lawyer as a starting point. They will still need to ask questions, advise you, and decide what belongs in binding documents.
• Anything involving a dispute, a buyout, or someone leaving belongs with a lawyer of your own.

How much does a partnership agreement cost?

It ranges widely. Templates can be free or low cost. Flat-fee drafting from a lawyer often runs from several hundred to a couple of thousand dollars. Custom work, where a lawyer spends real time with the partners, usually costs significantly more. These are illustrative US ranges, not quotes.

Is a cheap partnership agreement worth it?

It can be a valid, useful document. What a lower fee usually can't buy is time: the hours a lawyer would spend helping partners discover where they see things differently. That conversation is where most of the value is.

Can Stay Partners replace a lawyer?

No. Stay Partners helps partners have the conversation and write down what they agree on, in an MOU that's not intended to be legally binding. A lawyer of your own turns that into a binding agreement and gives legal advice.