I'm working on a deal as part of a buy side team and the sellers are first time sellers and very young thus literally have no idea how to manage through a transaction.

They have no advisor and instead rely on their lawyer. Their lawyer is a joke. He constantly gives wrong and value destructive "business advice" but the founder has established significant rapport with him.

We as the buyer team need to figure out how to influence the seller to hire competent counsel. Help!

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If there’s a good relationship, I’d take the founders out for dinner and drinks etc. and just tell them nicely that they’d get better advise if they do xyz. But of course come to table with 2-3 strong facts that show that you are not trash talking their lawyer but want to make sure that the process is efficient otherwise it could pose issues later. From an M&A advisor :) good luck!

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If the founders are this incompetent can their asset be worth the trouble? Advise your buyer to beware!

Sure and I bet they said the same about all the .com businesses, especially sharks.com!

Fight fire with fire. Hire a very good lawyer to represent you, and then work together to separate the commercial conversation from the legal conversation. It worked for me. Took a long time to fine tune but we got the deal done.

Maybe you can get an idiot on your side too.
:) but really, I believe the best you can you is to stand firm on your deal terms and get the founders to decide either they want the deal or not.
You can advise them get an experienced M&A advisor but if they trust that guy he might continue to be a blockage.

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Props to you for looking out for the seller. I know several who would just want to railroad them instead.

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