HI! I’m in Monroe County Ohio and I’ve been approached for leasing our acreage as well. We’ve spoken with several attorneys and mineral management companies to help us with negotiations and here’s what we’ve found. If an attorney is doing the negotiations, they are more than likely going to tell you they either want a small percentage of the whole bonus amount or a large percentage of the increased bonus amount after negations, meaning their percentage is on the difference between initial offer and whatever amount the bonus ends up at.
We have chosen to do the negotiation legwork by calling different non operators for additional bids then using that to negotiate alongside recommendations from attorneys. Then we’re using an attorney to review the operators lease and provide us with addendums to submit to the operator based on an hourly rate! This option means more work for us as technically the middle man between attorneys and the operator but it’s extremely more cost effective and we have the time and feel comfortable going this route. If you aren’t comfortable negotiating and don’t have the time to research and make a ton of calls and emails then have an oil and gas attorney do it all for you.
We signed up for Ohio NARO chapter and got recommendations for multiple law firms and attorneys. That’s a great place for you to start.