TLH EP.46 Justice, Technology, and Second Chances: Expanding Access with LegalEase
Hello, Legal Helm listeners!
Today, we’re pleased to welcome Roger Roman, co-founder and COO of LegalEase, a company operating at the intersection of justice, technology, and opportunity by helping individuals clear their criminal records and move forward with their lives.
Roger began his journey at Howard University and has since become a serial entrepreneur and creator who brings together design, technology, and storytelling. His work has been backed by organizations such as Google and Techstars, and he serves on the board of Starting With Today, a nonprofit supporting wealth-building and mental wellness in Black communities, alongside his leadership role at LegalEase.
In this episode, we’ll explore how product innovation can expand access to justice, the role of technology in creating meaningful second chances, and what it takes to build solutions that truly meet people where they are. Join us for an insightful conversation on impact-driven legal innovation. Stay tuned!
Your Host
Bim Dave is Helm360’s CEO. With 20+ years in the legal industry, his keen understanding of how law firms and lawyers use technology has propelled Helm360 to the industry’s forefront. A technical expert with a penchant for developing solutions that improve business systems and user experience, Bim has a knack for bringing high quality IT architects and developers together to create innovative, useable solutions to the legal arena.
Our Guest
Roger Roman is a Howard alum and serial entrepreneur focused on building tools that unlock second chances and expand access to justice. An ecosystem builder by nature, his ventures have been backed by Google and Techstars, and he serves on the board of Starting With Today, a nonprofit promoting mental wellness in Black communities.
At LegalEase, Roger is the engine that turns vision into velocity. He’s the Swiss Army knife behind the scenes, shaping products, crafting campaigns, and engineering growth from the ground up. With a rare blend of design instinct, technical know-how, and brand storytelling, Roger builds platforms that feel effortless to use and impossible to ignore, meeting people where they are and moving them toward a better future.
Bim Dave: Hello everyone and welcome to The Legal Helm. I’m your host, Bim Dave, CEO of Helm360. Today’s guest sits right at the intersection of justice, technology and opportunity. Roger Roman is the co-founder and COO at LegalEase, a company helping people clear their criminal records so that they can move forward with their lives.
Roger began his journey at Howard University and has since become a serial entrepreneur and a creator who brings together design, technology and storytelling. His ventures have been backed by organizations like Google and Techstars, and he serves on the board of starting with today a nonprofit supporting wealth, mental wellness in black communities, and LegalEase.
He heads product innovation, building tools that meet people where they are and support true second chances. Roger, it’s a pleasure to have you on the Legal Helm.
Bim Dave: So Roger, just to kind of give us a little bit of background on yourself, I’d love to understand a little bit more about. The journey from Howard University, um, through to entrepreneurship and then obviously co co-founder and COO at LegalEase. Maybe you could walk us through that experience.
Roger Roman: Absolutely. I’ll take you through that crazy, crazy, uh, journey, right? So, uh, it wasn’t, it, it definitely wasn’t a direct line, right?
Um, you know, I, I didn’t go to college saying, Hey, I’m gonna be this. Entrepreneur and build these tech startups in actuality, I went to school with hopes of becoming an attorney. that was, that was kind of the, the career path I was directed on. That’s what my, my parents laid out for me long before I could make the decision myself. Um, you know, it was, it was, it was, uh, put into the books that I was gonna go to school and become an attorney. Um, and that was the path, you know, I went to school, I was a English major and I, I majored in English. Uh, specifically because, you know, it would make me a better writer. Right? And, and with the emergence of chat, GPT and everything, that’s kind of. a, that’s a questionable, uh, uh, field to, to jump into. But I wanted to be a better writer because it would prepare me for law school. Uh, worked at a bunch of different law firms, had a few really high profile internships in some of the biggest firms in the, in the world actually.
Um, some global firms. And I did some, some work in the public defender’s office, and I kind of touched law from all of these different levels. You know, and, and prepare for the lsat. I did really well. But when it was time to make the decision to go to law school, you know, I kind of had soured on becoming a lawyer, right? every instance. You know, it just didn’t seem like something that would be fulfilling for me and, uh, you know, use my best talents. I was kind of in this rut, or not a rut, but I was just in this period where. You know, I hadn’t enrolled into law school even though I had, you know, great LSAT scores and everything. Um, and I was really trying to figure out something to do. And one thing that I. Look back on, you know, in my years as a undergrad, in my years in high school, I was always building something, or I had always had these side projects that I was working on, you know, while I was in school or, or doing something else.
Whether it was, you know, creating a, a nonprofit organization or, you know, building a little side hustle business and thing and things like that. I looked at that and I said, well, those are things that I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember. And, you know, I just did it because I wanted to do it. And I, I saw some joy in it.
And that’s when I started to look at entrepreneurship and building a business and, um, as maybe that’s something that I want to do. Right. And I even had a second guessing moment where I was like, well, you know, building a law firm is kind of the same. Right? You know, that, that would take the same, the same muscle.
Right. Um, but you know, I, I really just stumbled into entrepreneurship from, from there. You know, I, I’ve always been pretty, um, known to do those types of things. So when friends were starting businesses or, you know, they, they were starting new ventures, they would often reach out to me and say, Hey, you know, what do you think about this? I wanna bounce some ideas off you. And I, I pride myself on giving good feedback in that space. So entrepreneurship really just kind of found me. Um, I had three friends around the same time, you know. I’m trying to figure out my next move. I’m getting ready to graduate, um, don’t necessarily wanna go to law school, and I need something to kind of stave off my, my, my mom and, and give her a good explanation of why I’m not going to law school.
Right. And a friend of mine came with an idea for a video game studio, a mobile game studio that he was working on and, um, with a, with a couple other friends from college. And, you know, it, it, was helping out, you know, in, in a, in a volunteer friend space. And the more I got into it, I thought that it was something that was viable and I became a, a part of that founding team. and we went to California and we pitched and we learned, um, we were in way over our heads. We had no idea what we were doing. Um, I mean, like completely green. None of us had, you know, any, any, any background in tech or, or in the tech space. But I got the bug at that point. Right. You know, we failed miserably. Um, we were able to raise a little bit of money to, to start working on a prototype. Never got off the ground. Ran outta cash, everybody went back. You know, my, co-founder Lawrence was actually on that foundering team, my co-founder LegalEase, and he went back to law school and the other guys went to pursue different things.
And I stayed in California. Um. Moving back and forth from the bay to, to la, just kind of, you know, couch surfing, figuring it out. And, you know, my goal at that point was to work at any startup, any tech startup that I can get a job in. Um, and learn this space, right? I had kind of gotten bit bitten by the technology bug, and I, and I love that, you know, you could build these things that really fundamentally change how we do, how we live, right?
You know, whether it’s a, you know, at that time, consumer social apps were the, were the big thing, you know, it was Facebook and you know, then after that you had, you know, Tinder and all of these dating apps and things like that. But the fact that you could build something. From the ground and it could fundamentally change how people live their everyday lives.
That was always fascinating to me. And from there, you know, I just started to work and, um, I would take any job I can get. I worked at several startups in that time. Um, you know, I was everything from a graphic designer to a social media manager. Um, you know, just whatever I could do at these different startups to, to more learn the space.
And, um, I knew in the back of my mind that I was there and that that was kind of my apprenticeship. In terms of becoming a founder myself, I can learn from these founders. And uh, that’s really how it started. You know, that was the beginning of it the genesis.
Bim Dave: Amazing. What, what a fantastic, uh, story to, to begin with. And then, and then obviously you came to, to co-found LegalEase wa was there a particular moment or an experience that made you wanna build something that helps people in this manner?
Roger Roman: Um, yeah, and again, I, I kind of fell into that too, right? It’s, it’s funny how, you know, if you put yourself in these situations, um, these opportunities come along. So. I, I’ll fast forward a bit. You know, I, I worked at those startups eventually I built an agency, right? A marketing agency where we worked with, um. Technical founders who were building something and they wanted to launch and go to market. Um, they had the technical savvy, they, maybe they had the business savvy, but they weren’t necessarily, um, prepared to go to market. Right. And, and we would come in, I would come in as a project manager or a consultant, um, and I would help them kind of lay out their go to market plan. Um, and then we would help ’em execute, right? We fill holes on their team, whether it was, you know, copywriting, graphic design, video videography, whatever. needed to fulfill that, that marketing, that go to market push. And I did that for several years, um, and was, had some success. I worked with some, some very good startups. Um, and then there was one company that came along, it was actually, um, a remittance company. They were building a platform to allow people to send money. Um, from, from the US to Africa to several af several African countries, and they were using Crip cryptocurrency as a, as an underlying base. Um, and the lead dev there, we, we kind of hit it off the guy who was kind of leading the dev team and, um. Worked really well together, had some success with that organization as a consultant. forward years later, he actually left that company to start his own startup. and he was building a freelance platform for talent in Africa. Right. So this was a, a platform that allowed similar to a Fiverr or Upwork.
Um. What I didn’t know at the time was that several of, several of those platforms don’t necessarily work for African talent, um, because of the payment gateways. They work in countries like South Africa, of course, Nigeria, Kenya, like the, the companies, the countries that have kind of made their way in the tech space, but they didn’t work across the 50 countries across the continent.
So. Long story short, he was building that platform. He reached out to me for advice again, like, like what? It seems to happen a lot. And uh, of course I became immersed in it and kind of diving head on. And, um, I was working as a consultant and, and eventually he said, you know, you should be a co-founder with me and we should build this thing.
And I started building it. Um, we were able to scale that to seven countries. We onboarded about 20,000 users. Um, we got an investment from Google. Um, we went through Techstars with that startup. That was my first, uh, Techstars run, and I did it again. I, we’ll get into that later. Um,
Bim Dave: Hmm.
Roger Roman: and one of the first checks into that company was my co-founder for LegalEase Lawrence. he, he was a friends and family round, so he was on the cap table and he was invested in. he would be a part of our updates and we kind of stayed in contact that way. and then he started pitching me this idea around expungements, right? This, I’m in the midst of building a company. I’m head down building and I keep getting pinged, you know, Hey, I got this idea, you know, let me know what you think and check it out.
And of course, he’s an investor now. He’s not just my boy. He’s not just a friend, right? He’s actually a ve an investor in my company. So I gotta, I can’t just, Hey bro, you know, leave me alone. I’m busy, right? I gotta kind of. Give him some, some, some leeway there and, and kind of give him some good feedback because he, he’s on the cap table.
He, he took a flyer on me. So, um, you know, I would indulge him and I would say, you know, I, it seems like a good idea, but don’t, you know, don’t quit your day job. He was actually practicing law at this time, and I’m like, you know, you’re making pretty good money as a, as an attorney and you’re doing really well for yourself.
You know, I don’t know if you wanna jump into the startup space, um. And, you know, it, it, it just kind of stayed that right. It was an idea he would play with and he would kind of flesh it out more and more every few months and, um, eventually. With that, that startup, um, that I was working on AF blocks, which was the, is the name of it. Um, we intentionally built that on the continent of Africa. Right? So when we started, my co-founder, um, he was living in San Francisco and that was right before the pandemic. He actually went back to Zimbabwe and we intentionally built the team on the continent. Um, even though it was a Delaware C Corp and all of that, that good stuff, we wanted to make sure the core team and the HQ was in the continent, on the continent of Africa. Um, and. We had grown to a point where we had transitioned a lot of our roles in the states to talent in Africa. Right. I was, at that point, I was the only member of the team who was actually living in the States. Um, I was in California at the time. Everyone else was in either South Africa, Kenya, or Zimbabwe. So everyone was 10 hours at least ahead of me, right? So I’m, I’m the person who’s up at 11 o’clock at night when the team is just awake for the day. Having these meetings. Um, in addition to that, you know, my cost of living was a lot more than everyone else’s on the team. So now we’ve raised a little bit of money. You know, we’re starting to, to pay small salaries, not like market rate salaries, but you know, people have to live, right? So we’re paying money, and when it comes to me, you know, it’s three x four x, five x of what everyone else is getting paid. So was made that. I didn’t want to cripple the company by, you know, taking a bunch of money from the company.
I didn’t want to cripple the company anymore by being the only person who, you know, is 10 hours behind and people have to make accommodations for my, my time and everything. So we started to phase myself out. I mean, I’m giving you the background, um, phase my rollout. As the, as a member of the team, I invested my equity at that point.
I got the company to the point it needed to be. Um, I wasn’t necessarily as important to the day-to-day operations and perfectly, you know, at that time I just started to get more pings from Lawrence about this expungement play and, and I had a little bit of time on my hand and we started building on it. Um, and to be completely honest, I was very skeptical early on in terms of the, the market size and, you know, the, the usability and even if it could actually grow, right? If this is something that can be built in scale, right? The scalability of it. But after doing some research and seeing that there was, um, this is actually a blind spot.
You know, legal tech has been one of the spaces that has been, uh, reluctant to technology and advancement over, over the, the, the past, you know. 20 years or so. Um, the, I would say the legal tech space is usually one of the last people in line to kind of take advantage of these new, these new technologies. And we saw that, um, in this space for expungement as we started building and we realized that there was low hanging fruit and there was no one tackling this on a, on a nationwide scale. I know there’s a very long answer, um, to a very direct question, but I wanted to make sure you, you had the full picture, um, of how I got.
Bim Dave: No.
Roger Roman: of, of building this company.
Bim Dave: Yeah. No, I love, I love that it’s, it’s, it’s good to understand the journey, right? Because a lot, a lot of people come in and say, I founded this company, and, and there’s, there’s such a amazing backstory to it, which you’ve just described really eloquently. So it’s really, really good to hear that. Um, I do have a side question before we jump into LegalEase in a little bit more, which is, did you, did you manage to get a chance to go to Africa and visit any of the, the countries, um, out there?
Roger Roman: unfortunately, no. So again, we started building that company in 2020 and at that point my co-founder was here in the States. So, you know, it was like, oh, we’re gonna go, we’re gonna make these plans to go. And then of, unfortunately, you know, I. My problem is the least of the, the problems. But the pandemic, you know, took hold and, um, for the bulk of the time I was working on Afro blocks, we were in the middle of the pandemic.
Right. So, you know, the flight restrictions. And that’s why my co-founder actually, he was able to get home to Zimbabwe, he stayed, you know, ’cause he, he didn’t want to get stuck back in the States. Um, you know, he was there. He had, he had a, a growing family and everything. Wanted to be closer to home. Um, so unfortunately, man, no, I didn’t, I didn’t, but you know, there’s still time, right?
So, so, so I do have plans to, to, to, to take some trips in 2026, um, and, and to connect to some, to some people who I’ve only met on Zoom, right? I’ve only met them.
Bim Dave: Yes.
Roger Roman: Zoom and via phone calls. And that, that would be fun and I’m actually looking forward to it.
Bim Dave: No, absolutely. I, I’ve, I had the, the pleasure as, as a child. So my, my family, uh, a lot of my family were, were based in East Africa, in Kenya.
Roger Roman: Gotcha.
Bim Dave: Um, so I had the pleasure of going to visit them, uh, this like late nineties. And at that time it was like just a, it was such an amazing experience. ’cause my, my grandfather was a lawyer, um, based in Kenya.
And he, he basically like, kind of gave me a little insight in terms of like the justice system over there and, you know, and that kind of influenced some of the, the reasons why I kind of ended up going into the legal technology field. Um, but also just as a country, like it’s so rich in terms of like the, the beauty and the kind of, uh, the landscape.
Um, it just has so much to offer. So yeah, you must go there and you need to come back and share, share,
Roger Roman: is
Bim Dave: your experience.
Roger Roman: Kenya is definitely on the list. It’s funny because, you know, working with, uh, uh, a Pan-African team, right? Everyone, you know, touts the, the beauty and the, the, the fun of their country, right? And so, you know, uh, had Kenya, dev, Kenya, uh, dev members, dev team, uh, members who, you know, they would always. Brag about the beauty of their country and how great it was. And you hear the same thing from people in South Africa. You hear the same thing. So I’m looking forward to it. You know, everything I’ve seen and everything I’ve learned, you know, as a, as a person here stateside, um, looks like it, it’s, it, it fits the building, right?
And it, it lives up to, to the, to the hype.
Bim Dave: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, so let’s, let’s jump into LegalEase. So for someone who’s, um, hearing about LegalEase for the first time, can you explain to us what the platform is and what does it do in simple terms.
Roger Roman: Yeah, so I will. I’ll give you our overall mission first. So, at LegalEase, um, we’ve started with expungements, but our ultimate goal is to build tools that allow people to handle non-complex legal matters without an attorney. Right? So, you know, we’re not building a, an AI lawyer. We’re not build, we’re not trying to replace attorney. you know, there are places, there are, you know, places of the law where attorneys are necessary, right? And we would advise, you should probably have an attorney. Um, but there are a lot of these areas of law that aren’t complex and people can actually handle them themselves. Um, if they, if, you know, if, if, if they chose to do that. Uh, and that’s where we’re tackling, right? So the, the best comparison I can give is TurboTax, um, you know, if you had very complex. Uh, a very complex financial system. Um, you know, in in, in your personal life, you would hire an accountant, right? You would hire a CPA or someone who is certified and understands the, the inner workings of this.
But there are certain times where you don’t necessarily have to do that, right? So, you know, maybe, you know, you just have a job or, you know, you just have a very simple, straightforward. Um, financial situation and you go to TurboTax to file your taxes, right? And, and turbo taxes. They’re not acting as your accountant. They’re not acting as your CPA, they’re just guiding you and giving you the information you need to go ahead and complete this. And that’s the, that’s the, the, the, the mindset we took into building LegalEase. We wanted to build these tools that empowered people to handle this stuff on their own. Um, so they wouldn’t acquire, acquire those.
Um. Those crazy legal fees that, that come with some of this stuff, um, they can get things done in on their timeline, right? When you hire an attorney, you have to, you have to work around their schedule, right? Maybe they’re in court or maybe they have other things to do. You can schedule something two weeks out, you know, and then that’s a billable hour, so on and so forth. And it might not be necessary for something that’s. Very black and white, like the area of expungements, um, expungements are statutorily prescribed. So the, the, the rules that, um, determine if you qualify, they’re laid out in black and white. You either qualify or you don’t. There’s not a lot of gray area around it in most states. Um, and it seems like something that would be easily adaptable to technology, and that’s why we jumped into it. And just for your audience, you know, I, I’m pretty sure you have a savvy audience, you know, with this being a legal podcast, but an expungement. Um, or a record clearance is the right of every person or every citizen, you know, and, and the laws differ slightly amongst each states, each state, um, to have a old record removed once you finished all your obligations. Um, so I’ll give you an example. Let’s say I have a disturbing the peace misdemeanor that I was charged with 10 years ago, and it’s still on my record. I want it expunged. go through the process. I file a petition, the court. Um, approves the petition and then it’s removed from my record, meaning that when a background search is done, um, it doesn’t come up when you know a background search is done, whether it’s for housing or employment or whatever. That record doesn’t pop up. Now, the common misconception is that it disappears forever. It doesn’t necessarily disappear forever. Law enforcement can always see it. So if you were arrested in Los Angeles, California, and you got an expunged, maybe Los Angeles should, I shouldn’t use the, let’s say Washington, DC If you were arrested in Washington DC and you had it expunged, no employer can see it, no landlord can see it.
Uh, you know, just no person. On any of these third party background sites can see that, but law enforcement can still see that you were arrested on this date for this thing. Uh, just wanted to put that clarification out there. And that’s where we started. You know, we, we started there because again, like I said earlier, there was a gap in the market. It seemed like something that was very black and white, that we could use technology to make it more, uh, uh, paper heavy. Um, you know, red tape. Process, you know, and, and make it more streamlined and effective for the end user who, who we built for.
Bim Dave: Yeah. No, absolutely. And, and it sounds like the, the human impact is, is big, right? With something like this, what, tell us a little bit about that. Like in, there must be some stories in terms of what your platform’s been able to, to deliver in terms of impact to, to the people that are using it.
Roger Roman: Yeah. On a macro level, I mean. On a macro level, I’ll start there. You know, just being able to get an expungement can have a huge effect on a person’s life. Um, and what we’ve seen historically is that people have been kind of locked out of these opportunities, right? You know, people who, who have representation, who have, uh, attorneys on retainer or who have access to this information, they understand these things, but there are a lot of people who don’t, who might be, you know, at the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum. Spectrum, um, who don’t, maybe they don’t even know about expungements, and if they do, they’re just intimidated by the process. Um, you know, they don’t have $3,500 to hire an attorney to do it for them. Um, so just kind of forego it and, and don’t think about it. Uh, and that’s a huge, huge, uh, uh, uh, burden not only on that individual, but the economy as a whole.
Right. We’re, we’re, we’re limiting, you know, a person’s ability to be socially mobile, um, to be economically mobile. we’re limiting a person’s ability to find better housing and improve their, their, their living conditions, um, because of a, of a mistake they might’ve made, you know, 10, 15 years ago, whatever that that time may be. And you know, the law, the law says if you, you’ve paid your, your, your fines, you know, you fulfilled whatever the court said you should do, whether it’s community service or whatever, then and, and a certain amount of time has passed, you should be able to remove this thing. Um. There have been, uh, some studies done, that, that say, you know, a person who had, who’s had an expungement can improve their, their, their wages by 20 to 25%. Um, you know, the recidivism rates go down. Um, and, and then on a more personal say, I can even tell you stories of people you know, we’ve had and why they saw expungements. I’ll give you two really quick ones. Um, one of our first customers when we were testing our MVP out, um, was a young lady who was a CNA. was a nurse’s assistant, and, you know, she had hopes and dreams of becoming a registered nurse, which is, you know. process that you’d have to go through, and then of course, right. Be um, she had always, uh, kind of avoided moving up in that space because she had an incident on her, on her record, um, from years prior.
I don’t think it may have been seven or eight years prior, um, to when she reached out. Uh, but, but on paper it looked a lot worse than what it was. So, without revealing too much, I’ll say she. years ago, got into a argument with her boyfriend at the time, um, and they were in a public setting. Um, and the argument got pretty intense.
And they were both arrested, right? They were both arrested for domestic violence. Um, it was a misdemeanor. I think she did some community service and, you know, she moved on with her life actual, and, and actually the, the boyfriend that she was in that argument with, they ended up married. Having children, having a happy family, uh, all these years later. Um, but because she had this domestic violence thing on her record, she avoided. Any opportunities where a background check, you know, she just kind of avoided because she, she was, it was an ugly mark on her record. Um, she didn’t want to be painted as a, as a person who beats people.
Right. And, and that was the, the initial assumption you would get if you see domestic violence on anyone’s record. Right? Like, oh, you’re, you know, you’re not a good person. Right. Um, so she avoided those, any situations where that would come up. And she didn’t pursue any, any, any promotions or anything like that because of it. for her, in her case, it was more of a mental block than it was a block, you know, a actual block that stopped her from, from moving along. It was something that was in her head and, and who knows, maybe because it was a misdemeanor and it was so old, no one would’ve cared and they would’ve moved past it, or maybe she would’ve been judged by it.
Who knows, right? We don’t know that. But long story short. Again, she was able to come to us. We helped her with that expungement, and she felt a lot of relief in terms of just being able to go out and, and go into these spaces where, you know, she might have to get a background check, um, to, to, to move forward.
Um, so that was one. Where it served as a mental block more so than a, than a real block. And then there was another guy, very unique case, um, ’cause typically we hear people say, you know, I want to get a promotion, or, I’m, I’m applying for this loan. this young man called, and he was actually, you know, he, he was very, you know, forthright about, you know, he, he wasn’t, he didn’t have the best. Time in his twenties. Right. And this was, we were talking 15 years prior to this, this conversation. Um, you know, he made a lot of mistakes, did a lot of things that he shouldn’t have done, that he regrets. Um, you know, but he, he paid the price and he, he, he went through those, those, those, uh, consequences and dealt with them. And he’s moved on, right? He, we are, years later, he is moved on he’s completely removed from that lifestyle and, um, has a family one of his children is playing. Pop Warner Football, or I don’t, yeah, I think it was football A parent, one of the parents asked if he would, would he volunteer to coach? Um, you know, he seemed to be good with the kids. He’s there, he’s around, whatever, you know, we need extra coaches, we need extra hands. I have children who play sports, so I totally get it right. You know, Hey, can you help out and coach? And he was like, yeah, you know, I’ll do it. That’s fine. You know, I, I love to do it.
You know, and he jumped in and um, I think after one week of him being a volunteer. He was notified by someone that, um, you know, he actually hadn’t passed the background check. Um, because you know, these things that he had in the past on his record, um, again, which were expungable offenses. Right? And just to be clear that, you know, violent crimes, uh, violent felonies and, and, and crimes of moral turpitude are usually things that aren’t.
Expungable, um, DUI in some, in some states, you can’t get that expunged as well. So, you know, when we’re talking about things that can be expunged, we’re, we’re excluding those, right? So he hadn’t heard anyone, you know, it wasn’t anything like that. But here we are, 15 years later, he has a family, he’s an upsetting member of his community and he can’t volunteer to help his, his son’s, uh, peewee football team because of this thing that’s holding him back, right?
And, and that hurt him a lot. Um, you know, and it really made him do some self-reflection and, you know, and, and, and it made him kind of seek, seek us, you know, in terms of how can I get this removed because I don’t want to come to this again, not only was it a painful thing to be, to have to turn the team down, but now you know, there’s questions, you know, from, from other people and people around about, you know, well, why couldn’t he volunteer?
And, you know, it’s this person safe to have around our children. All these things pop up because of this simple mistake. I wouldn’t say simple, but I’ll say the mistake that he made years before. So the impact, um, and, and the way that it can close doors on people are great. I can give you more and more stories, right?
People are trying to apply for, for, um, rent to own loans or, you know, people trying to move into, to apartments in better neighborhoods and, and things like that. Like these stories, they come in constantly. Um, but those two stick out because they were sold. Unique, and it wasn’t necessarily the block of having a criminal record, but you know the things that, that spawn from that.
Right.
Bim Dave: Yeah, no, that’s, that’s, I mean, those are two really hard hitting stories, to be honest with you, because it’s one thing to build a, a technology solution that solves a problem, but actually, like this is a solution that’s changing lives. Right. So thank you for sharing those.
So, so just, just talking a little bit about the, the kind of technology side of things a little bit more so. At its heart, um, LegalEase is, is a, is a technology platform, right? Um, and, and as we know, as we see, um, through our industry day in, day out, um, there’s an increasing use of tech and combined with AI to help simplify the approach that, you know, we, we deliver to either a consumer or internally to a law firm in terms of how they, how they solve a problem.
Um, I’d, I’d love to hear a little bit about, you know, your kind of approach to building the platform side of things and, and how you, how you built a platform that kind of makes sense to the end user. What are the kind of principles of that that, that kind of helped you deliver a solution that actually makes sense to the audience?
Roger Roman: Yeah, and, and I, I’m glad you touched on that, and that’s one of the things that when we first started building and we first went out fundraising. you know, we ran into that and just researching the legal tech market, understanding that most platforms that are being built today, or have been built in the last few years, um, have been built to make the lawyer’s job easier, to make them be able to charge more money for less work, um, more billable hours and all those things. And our platform, you know, LegalEase was born from the opposite of that. Right. So, for context, my co-founder Lawrence, is actually at a practice. He’s an, he’s an attorney, right? Um, and you know, when he was pinging me, like I I talked about before, one of the things that he would often mention is that, you know, I’m charging people, you know, $1,500.
$2,000 to, to, to do these expungement. And literally all I’m, all I’m doing is having a 15 minute conversation with them where I get the details of the case, then I fill out a petition, I send it to the clerk. You know, it is like, it’s literally, you know, an hour’s worth of work. And, you know, I, I don’t feel right charging that amount of money, but, you know, I’m a lawyer, I gotta make money.
This is how I keep my lights on. You know, and, and there’s gotta be a way that we could do this at scale, right? He’s like, yeah, you know, if, if I built this, I would miss out on those clients, but you know, I’d rather have. Thousands to millions of people I can help across the country as opposed to a few clients here in my state.
Um, and he was actually practicing in Mississippi. So the, the platform and everything we’ve built from there has always been to make it easier for the end user to, to be able to, um, um, do this without an attorney. Right. And it was, it was never about, you know, making more money for their attorney. It was never about making the law firm more, um, um. Making a law form firm, uh, more, um, I guess technically enabled, right? And, and, and making it easier for them to onboard people and remove and friction there. It’s always been about delivering value to that end user that makes it worth their money. Um, and, and we’ve stuck to that. That’s a major ethos.
That’s why it’s a part of our mission of, uh, of building, you know, tools for the, for, for people to solve these non-complex, uh, uh. These non-complex problems without an attorney. Um, that’s kinda always been the baseline. Um, and it’s, it’s opposite. It’s opposite of mo, it’s the opposite of most legal platforms that are really being built again to, to help the lawyer make more money.
I don’t think, you know, look, I have nothing against attorneys. I, I admire a lot of the work. I, I’ve been on the path to being an attorney my entire life. I love the fact that, you know, uh, um, the work that we can do, I love legal dramas. I’m a, a big, big student of, of, of, um, you know, just the history of the, the US justice system in particular. Um, but you know, I, I do think, I don’t think we need to help lawyers make more money. I’ll say that. Um, that’s not our goal. Um, you know, and, and we do understand that, that, that lawyers are critical to, to certain spaces. But, you know, you don’t, you, you don’t often hear about a lawyer deeming themselves an expungement lawyer.
You hear about lawyers who are, you know. Uh, personal injury attorneys, divorce attorneys, corporate lawyers, you know, m and a, all of these things. But you very, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a person say I’m an expungement lawyer, and expungement is one of those places because it’s not. It’s, it’s low hanging fruit. It’s not sexy per se. Um, it’s a place that we can, we can go in and, and actually build this for the end user the same way. You know, that, that, again, TurboTax is doing that, solving that problem for people who wanna file their IRS tax returns. You know, they don’t need any complex, uh, accounting, right, for their personal life.
They just need this basic form, which, you know, this basic form that needs to be filled out every year. And we, we’ve approached it the same way.
Bim Dave: Yeah. No, a hundred, a hundred percent get that. So, so you, you talked about some of your early, uh, career and some of the entrepreneurial, um, startups that you were kind of involved in. And I, I love the fact that you talk about some of the failure as well, because a lot, again, a lot of people don’t understand that actually to get to a point of success, you have to fail many times and learn.
Um, yeah. Yeah. So I’d, I’d love if you could kind of share any, like, maybe one or two, um, examples of the lessons you learned through those failures that have kind of led you to some of the success you see legally.
Roger Roman: Yeah. Um, I’m, I’m happy to do that. So I think the one biggest lesson, or, or just kind of insight that I, I’ve gained is, you know. Timing is, is, is everything in this space. Um, you know, you can be too soon, you can be too late. Um, you can work on a project too long or you can quit too early, right? And there’s no, there’s no silver, silver bullet.
There’s no right answer on, you know, or formula to put, to put in place to, to know that, right? You just kind of, kind of trust your instincts and do your research and the more you know about the market. And you, you know, the more you understand about the space you you’re in, you can figure those things out.
But I think. Understanding when to stop, um, and understanding when to be resilient and keep going. I think that balance, you know, everyone says don’t stop, and if you keep going, you’re gonna make it. And I think that’s true to some extent. Um, but also, you know, there is a time where the writing is on the wall and it’s like, well, this is not gonna work. Uh, we’ve pretty much run into a brick wall. We have to either pivot or, you know, go back to the drawing board, you know, and, and just kind of having the. The sense to understand that and understand when we’ve, we’ve, we’ve exhausted every option to make this thing work. We’ve done every possible thing that we can, you know, and, and there is nothing else we can do.
And being confident in that, right. Not, not sleeping, saying, well, I wish I would’ve done this. No, we’ve, we’ve cleared the, the, we’ve cleared the to-do list on that side, and we have, we’re at a standstill and we understand that this is not gonna go any further. Now is the time to pivot into something else. Um, I think just kind of gaining that muscle over the time, and, and I think you can only do that when you’ve had success and you’ve had failure and you’ve been on the rollercoaster of entrepreneurship. It’s not just with tech. I mean, I think that it, it applies to across the board and even, you know, for creatives, you know, people who create, you know, I think it’s the same thing there as well.
You do it so many times, you start to pick up on the ebbs and flows, right. And you understand that, okay, if I build this, you know. 10:00 AM on Monday, I can get the best call in the world and, and, and I can solidify a partnership with a partner that I’ve been courting for months, you know, and then at 2:00 PM that same day, you know, I can get. customers demanding a, a refund because something didn’t work on the platform. Right. And that’s the balance of the day. And, you know, being able to deal with that admin flow and understanding that, you know, even when things are hard or even things don’t necessarily seem to be moving in the direction you want, there are signals that to look for that say, you know, we’re, we’re on the right path.
Right. And, and being able to, to, to find those signals. Be able to use them for as motivation when things might not look great. Right. Maybe, you know, the payroll is coming up and, you know, you gotta pay people and you got contractors and all these people and you’re looking at the account and money’s going low and all these things, but you know, hey, we, we onboarded, you know, 50 people this week, right?
Or, or we’ve onboarded, you know, three great partnerships and, and, and this, and you know, so the. Being able to balance that, I think is the strongest muscle I’ve developed in the space. Um, and, and understanding that, and I, I, I feel bad because there’s not like a piece of advice I can give people. Um, most I would say is, you know, be resilient.
Of course. That’s the, that’s the baseline. Be resilient and, and build, and, you know, exhaust every avenue, exhaust, every opportunity. And then at that point, when you feel like you’ve exhausted it and you’ll know, you know, you’ve tried everything right then. on the wall and it’s time to hang it up. You can confidently do that because, you know, I left it all out. I mean, athletes say, you know, athletes will say, leave it all on the field. Right? You know, you’ve done everything, you’ve prepared as hard as you can. You’ve done everything there it’s still not working. Then it’s time to, to, to figure something else out.
Um, so I, I’m sorry, that’s not like a direct quotable piece of advice, but, but I think, um, that’s one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is just knowing when to keep going and, um, when to pivot.
Bim Dave: Yeah. No, that’s, that’s super helpful. So I appreciate that. I’m sure the, the audience appreciate that, that wisdom from experience, right? Because it, it means a lot. Um, so, so when we look ahead and we look at the kind of future of LegalEase, what, what’s next is, is there new states features, partnerships on the horizon?
Where, where, where do you see it going next?
Roger Roman: So when we launched, um, we launched in, uh, late July of this year. The last week of July we launched, um, we launched in Mississippi. Um, and, and the reason we chose Mississippi one was because my co-founder practices law there, he’s also a state representative, um, in the house there. Um, and Mississippi has one of the more paper heavy court systems. Um, it, it’s probably one of the. Yeah, it’s, it’s paper heavy, right? There’s not a lot of, uh, e-filing or, or or technology involved in a lot of spaces for the consumer. There is for attorneys, but not for the consumer. So we figured if we can make it work in Mississippi, high incarceration rates, um, you know, very high poverty level, if we can make it work there, then we can kind of replicate that in, in other states, right?
And, and, and remove some of those barriers. So we launched in Mississippi. week of July, we anticipated having a few hundred people sign up, you know, and, and we would kind of work with through those and, and learn from those few first, first few hundred customers, um, to our surprise. That first week of launching, within two weeks we had 3000 people who had onboarded the platform from all over the country. Right. Even though we weren’t active in their states. Right. And it was a lot of confusion early on because we didn’t anticipate that. And, and that’s what happens when you’re building a startup. And we had to refund a PE a few people because, you know, they lived in Minnesota or they lived in, in, in Iowa or California, and they signed up and they paid money and we weren’t necessarily live there.
So. There was some learning there, but we, but it, it excited us about the, the, the demand and the people who needed it. So we kind of sped up our timeline in terms of going into those other states. Before we had more of a conservative rollout. We would, you know, master it in Mississippi, then go to another state, so on and so forth. Um, but we spent that timeline up and we are in the process of piloting, uh, five additional states right now, actually. So we’re looking to. Launch officially in the next few weeks in California, Texas, Maryland, Illinois, uh, and Georgia. Right. And, and. Those are the next states that slated to, to launch. The goal originally was to be launched in those states.
This month it’s looking more like we’re gonna be launched in those states the first week of January. Um, so excited about that. Uh, and one of the, the added components that we are, we’re building into the platform where we built into the platform that wasn’t there for Mississippi is the, the, the ability to e-file, um, in Mississippi, because the process is so paper heavy, we actually generated a PDF petition. For users to submit to the clerk, um, in many jurisdictions, they had to actually submit that by hand. Um, with these new states we’ve built in an eal, eal, um, system where not only can they pay their state fees inside of the platform, they can send their petitions directly to the court clerks. Um, and handle everything in our, in our ecosystem.
I’m so am so excited about that. Excited to roll that out over the next few months. And then from there, it’s really just about expanding to each state, building those workflows out for every state. Um, that offers record clearance. Right now there’s 48 states that offer some form of record clearance. Um, two states that offer a very complicated. system. Um, and we haven’t worked that out yet, but, but for those 48 that offer record clearance, we’re, we’re, we’re slated to expand to each one over the next 18 months.
Bim Dave: Amazing sounds, sounds like a good and exciting, uh, period ahead. So I wish you all the best in, in the expansion of your, of your platform.
Roger Roman: Yeah, it’s
Bim Dave: Yeah,
Roger Roman: it’s
Bim Dave: yeah.
Roger Roman: right? As, as any founder would know, as I’m sure you know, like it’s, there’s a challenge. You deal with challenges every day, but it’s, it’s, it’s definitely exciting.
Bim Dave: Indeed, indeed. So Roger, I’m just gonna move to a couple of wrap up questions. Um, the first of which being if you could go back to yourself at 18 years old, what advice would you give yourself?
Roger Roman: I buy Bitcoin though. I’m joking. Um, yeah. 18, I would say. Um, that’s tough. I mean, I, I think. Trust your gut. You know, I, I would just tell myself, I, I think you know, everything, even when times were dark and it didn’t seem like, you know, this was the right path, um, you know, I was able to stay resilient. But there was always times where, you know, we we’re human right.
You doubt if you’ve made the right decision. And I would just give myself the insurance, you know, trust your gut and everything will work out for you.
Bim Dave: Amazing. Good, good advice. And on you, you, you kind of mentioned this and, and I think resilience is a key part of, of being an entrepreneur, right? But on those difficult days, what’s the personal why for you in terms of like, what, what motivates you to carry on and, and get past those difficult days and keep moving forward?
Roger Roman: Ooh. Um, so I think that’s, that’s multilevel one On a personal, personal level, you know, I’ve, I’ve always chased greatness, I guess, and, and, and. You know, been a high achiever and, and things have kind of worked out that way for me in, in, in life. So, you know, personally, I I, I’m always looking to impress myself, right?
And, and do more and kinda achieve more. Um, that’s a big why. I do have a, a. Almost delusional belief in myself. Um, which I think, you know, you, you gotta kinda have that as an entrepreneur. You gotta be able to figure out problems and, and, and solve things. And, um, so that’s there. And then of course, you know, I, I, I have children, I have a wife and, and a family and you know, I have three lovely children and you know, they motivate me every day.
Right? You’re seeing their them be happy and be able to experience things because of the work that I do. Right? So. You know, I think just the personal motivation, um, is there in terms of wanting to achieve and wanting to, to, to accomplish things and build things. That’s part of my DNA. Um, but also of course, you know, just being a dad and, and being able to create experiences for my family, you know, that’s, that’s motivation as well.
And then I think on a bigger macro level, um, every startup I’ve built, or the past few startups, even the ones that have failed, have always had a social impact. um. Angle to them, right? Where, where, where we’re looking to improve people’s lives. And that’s kind of always been an underlying, underlying motivation as well.
Like, you know, the work that I’m doing here not only helps me personally and, and gives me some satisfaction on a personal level and helps my family because I can provide for them financially, but it’s also helping people like this platform I’m building is giving people the opportunity to advance their lives and, and better themselves, whether it’s. Get more gig work in Africa, right? As a person who, you know, has a, a CS degree or a design degree, and they can get more work and, and improve their lives. Or someone removing an, an old, uh, an old mistake from their record and, and being able to have a fresh start. Um, those things motivate me, uh, for the most part.
Bim Dave: Amazing. Rod Roger, I really, really appreciate you spending some time with me today. It’s actually very motivational to kind of hear you speak just because of the purpose behind, like the mission that you guys are on. Um, so. I wish you all the best in, in the success of LegalEase. I’m sure it’s gonna be amazing and continue to grow.
And when you do, do the Africa trip, come back and tell us all about it and, uh, and we’d love to see how, how you grow.
Roger Roman: Absolutely. Thank you so much Bim. I, I, I appreciate it and um, yeah, looking forward to it.
Bim Dave: Thank you, Roger.