Episode 54 - Legal Agility In Developing New Tech with Jeremy Streten

Our guest on this episode of the DevReady Podcast is Jeremy Streten, founder of “Business Legal Life Cycle”, a business focused on making legal advice accessible to business owners. Jeremy briefly started out his career in IT before pivoting to become a lawyer about 17 years ago. After several years in the industry, Jeremy realized that many lawyers tend to speak with their clients in unnecessarily complicated ways that are not helpful to average people who do not have legal training. He saw an opportunity for building a bridge between business owners and helpful legal advice and he sought out a developer to help him create the infrastructure. The basis for the BLL assessment came from Jeremy’s outline of the 13 business phases, which eventually became his book entitled “The Business Legal Life Cycle.” During the creation of the first version of the Business Legal Life Cycle software, Jeremy experienced plenty of miscommunications with the developer he had hired. This solidified in his mind the necessity for a tech partner and also for the implementation of proper documentation at the beginning of all client and employment relationships. When it came time to work on version 2.0, Jeremy reached out to a Mastermind group that he was a part of in the U.S. and met an interested developer there who eventually became his business partner. He says that having a tech partner continually involved in the business and the evolution of the tech being used is a crucial part of the business. Topics Covered: • Many lawyers aren’t very helpful because they don’t speak plain English to their clients. • How Jeremy’s legal background helped prepare him to fill in this gap between business owners and proper legal advice. • Keeping in mind what you want to do in the future. • Setting up your documentation the right way from the start. • Finding the right developer and building out the tech. • How miscommunications can lead to misaligned expectations and outcomes. • Changing the targeting of the product based on feedback. • Having a larger purpose: to make legal advice accessible to business owners. Key Quotes • “It’s to help business owners generally to know what they need to do from a legal perspective.” (1:10) • “People change. Money changes people.” (6:04) • “Every business evolves over time, and if you’re not evolving then you’re probably going backward.” (19:25) • “You get what you pay for.” (25:11)