A Freelancer’s Right to Choose
I’ve been thinking about how it feels like there are no choices when it comes to the law. Especially when it comes to the law and your business. There are things you just “have” to do and things you “should” do that don’t really feel like a choice. They just feel like a requirement and sound like dogma. There’s this rule you need to follow and that rule you need to abide by if you want to do things right. If you want to do this business thing right and stay out of trouble. But here’s the truth: when it comes to the law, you have the right to choose.
Understanding Legalese: Why a Common Law Trademark Might be Enough
All we ever hear about is why it’s important to register your trademark with the federal trademark office to protect your brand. And that may be true for some businesses, but it’s not necessarily true for all businesses, especially the mom-and-pop shops, the freelancers, and other small businesses that have no plans to build a national or international brand, but are instead excited about serving their local communities or existing in their own little corner of the internet.
How to Understand Legalese: Legal “Shoulds” v. Legal “Necessities”
If you go on the internet right now and search “legal requirements for starting a business,” a bunch of articles will pop up with a list of 10 to 15 things that you “should” do when starting a business. But just because those articles say you “should” do it, it doesn’t mean that you “need” to do it.
Why Not Every Legal Issue Needs a Lawyer
There’s a lot of stuff you can do without a lawyer if you speak enough legalese to get by. If you build a basic understanding of the legal issues that come up in work and business, you can make a lot of informed decisions confidently without having to consult a lawyer.
How to Cope with Stress from Legal Issues
You know what no one ever talks about when it comes to legal issues in your business: the toll it takes on you mentally, emotionally, and physically. They can be tricky to understand and the fear of making a mistake that results in a big consequence is very real. So when we talk about becoming legalese fluent, we also need to talk about how you’re tending to your nervous system.
Here’s How I Teach You Legalese
I’m committed to teaching legalese because I hail from the “teach a person to fish” school of thought. I think teaching someone how is more powerful than doing it for them. So I break legalese down for you step-by-step, sentence-by-sentence so you can learn how to read it, write it, and speak it for yourself. This ultimately makes you a savvier business person and a more discerning consumer of legal services, both of which are important.
Here’s Why it’s so Hard to Understand Legalese
Let’s be honest: legalese is basically a foreign language. I know the words it uses are technically “English” words. But those “English” words can have different meanings in legalese. And the rules that govern sentence structure in regular English don’t really seem to apply in legalese. Legalese and English are not same, same.
3 Legal To Dos Before Starting Your Business
But here’s the thing: when you’re first starting a business, all you’re really doing is testing an idea to see if it gets any traction. And the reality is that you might have to test that idea in many different ways before you find a market fit. So that list of legal things the experts say you just “have” to do when you start a business tends to be pretty unrealistic and overly complicated in my opinion.
What to do when the Law Triggers You
The truth is that the law triggers us all the time – triggers our stress response that is. And learning how to manage our own nervous system when it comes to our business and especially the legal stuff in our business is critical. So without further ado, here are my tips on what to do when something legal in your work triggers the sh*t out of you
Why Being Legalese Fluent Matters
Want to know what language we should have learned in school, but didn’t? Legalese. Legalese is the language of the law. It has its own words, its own sentence construction, and its own rules. It’s something that we should learn alongside English and another language in school.
Here’s Why I Teach Legalese to Everyday People
The law can feel overwhelming and perhaps even scary, especially if you aren’t familiar with legal jargon and how it relates to your business. Let’s change that.