Post author here. Definitely agree that clients should take time to educate themselves. That's actually the point of the post and the point of reviewing the bill. We can't all start off knowing everything.

Hopefully being able to forecast legal expense is part of that learning process. In this case, the client was able to separate the one-time from the ongoing legal spend.

Reviewing your bill is great way to make better decisions in the future. The point in the post about investor-driven costs is a good example of something they can do differently the next time around. Hopefully it's also something that startup founders reading the post can be proactive about.

The post was not meant to be anti-lawyer in any way. I know much of the commentary around law firms turns out that way. But it's certainly not my intent.