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.