  We discuss the impact of the soft degrees of freedom inside the B_c meson on
its rate in the semi-leptonic decay B_c -> X l nu_l where X denotes light
hadrons below the D^0 threshold. In particular we identify contributions
involving soft hadrons which are non-vanishing in the limit of massless
leptons. These contributions become relevant for a measurement of the purely
leptonic B_c decay rate, which due to helicity suppression involves a factor
m_l^2 and thus is much smaller than the contributions involving soft hadrons.
