If you are a New Hampshire business owner, sooner or later you’ll probably have to choose a lawyer to represent you in handling a significant legal problem that confronts you. The better your choice, the more likely you’ll successfully solve your problem. What process should you follow in making this choice?

Since my own practice is focused on LLC law and tax, I’ll suggest below an eight-question process you should consider following in order to choose an LLC lawyer, whether to form an LLC, to draft or fix an LLC operating agreement, to buy or sell an LLC, or to handle an LLC internal dispute. However, I suspect that that the process outlined below will also be generally applicable in choosing lawyers in other legal specializations.

For concreteness, I’ll assume in this column that a business friend of yours has recommended that you hire a hypothetical lawyer named Alan Andrews to handle your LLC problem. In order to make sure that Alan can provide you with the LLC services you need, I propose that, from Alan’s online biography, from his LinkedIn account or from talking with Alan herself, you obtain answers to most or all of the following questions. If you don’t get good answers to these questions, don’t hire Alan.

■Experience. Ask him how much experience he has had in handling the LLC problem that concerns you.

■Legal fees. Ask him the hourly rate he charges for his LLC work and how much he thinks he’s likely to charge for his work for you.

■Knowledge of the New Hampshire LLC Act and LLC caselaw. Ask him if he is an expert regarding the New Hampshire LLC Act and New Hampshire LLC caselaw. In this connection, ask him what he views as the chief legal characteristics of New Hampshire LLCs and what legal and tax advantages they provide that New Hampshire corporations don’t provide. And ask him to summarize for you one or two key New Hampshire LLC cases.

■LLC taxation. Ask him if he possesses LLC federal and New Hampshire tax expertise. In particular, ask him whether he knows how to structure LLC operating agreements to maximize members’ IRC section 199A deductions and, under the IRS audit guidelines in Prop. Reg. § 1.1402(a)-2, how to minimize their Self-Employment Tax liabilities. And if your business owns New Hampshire real estate, ask him if he is an expert regarding the New Hampshire Real Estate Transfer Tax. If he says he lacks these various forms of tax expertise, ask him if he works with lawyers or accountants who possess them.

■LLC practice tools. If you want him to help you form an LLC or to address defects in the operating agreement of an existing LLC, ask him whether he has a comprehensive checklist for handling these tasks and whether he has comprehensive LLC forms. If he lacks these key LLC practice tools, he’s not an LLC expert.

■Sample operating agreement. Ask him to provide you with an operating agreement he’s drafted for a multi-member LLC client (obviously, after deleting information identifying the relevant client). This agreement will tell you whether he knows how to draft legal documents his clients can actually understand.

■LLC publications. Ask him whether he has ever published an article or other writing about LLC legal or tax issues in the New Hampshire Bar News or elsewhere.

■Strategic partnerships, etc. Ask him if he has ever worked with other New Hampshire lawyers on LLC matters in in his capacity as a New Hampshire bar association officer or in drafting New Hampshire LLC legislation.

Other lawyers may disagree with the above eight-step process. I welcome their comments on it.

John Cunningham is a lawyer licensed to practice law in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He is of counsel to the law firm of McLane Middleton, P.A. Contact him at 856-7172 or lawjmc@comcast.net. His website is llc199a.com. For access to all of his Law in the Marketplace columns, visit concordmonitor.com.

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