Expungement Made Simple: Lowering Barriers with AI ft. LegalEase Co-Founder, Roger Roman | Ep. 99 Artwork

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Expungement Made Simple: Lowering Barriers with AI ft. LegalEase Co-Founder, Roger Roman | Ep. 99

March 23, 2026 • Aliya Cheyanne • Season 6 • Episode 99

0:00 | 1:04:46

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In this conversation, Roger Roman, co-founder of LegalEase, shares his journey from a young lawyer to an entrepreneur focused on empowering individuals to handle their own legal matters, particularly expungements. He discusses the inspiration behind LegalEase, the role of AI in simplifying the expungement process, and the importance of community partnerships. Roger emphasizes the challenges of work-life balance for entrepreneurs and the legacy he hopes to leave through empowerment and accessibility in the legal field.

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Confidence Through Preparation

Roger Roman 0:35

And I think the more prepared you are, the more you understand what you're building, the easier it is to make that those decisions and have that discernment. So one for sure, being resilient, believing in yourself, betting on yourself. But like any athlete would tell you, you know, the more you're in the gym, the more you're working out, the more you're practicing, the more confident you are in the field or on the court or wherever, right? And I think it's the same thing with entrepreneurship. The more you understand what you're doing and where you're going, the better idea you have of how successful this gonna this is gonna be hi everyone.

Aliya Cheyanne 1:14

Welcome back to the show. I'm so excited that you're here, and I'm super excited to have Roger Roman on the show today. Hi, Roger.

Roger Roman 1:22

Hi, how are you? Happy to be here. Happy to be here.

Aliya Cheyanne 1:26

Yeah, I'm super happy to have you as well. I'm super excited to talk to you about all things legal ease. But before we jump into that, can you let folks know a little bit more about you and who you are in the world today?

Roger Roman 1:39

Yeah, no doubt. I am Roger Roman. I am the co-founder, one half of the founding team of Legal Ease. I am a self-described serial entrepreneur. I've been building companies

Meet Roger And LegalEase

Roger Roman 1:51

and building ecosystems for as long as I can remember. Yeah, you know, excited to actually launch a product and a company that has been very successful in our initial stages, helping a lot of people and we're looking to grow it. So happy to be here.

Aliya Cheyanne 2:05

Yes, super excited. We love serial entrepreneurs on this podcast. And I am selfishly super excited to talk to you more about legal ease because as someone who has worked in the nonprofit industry for a really long time and who has worked in the criminal justice reform space, this is a platform that I am learning more about and that I'm super excited is available and accessible to more people. So before we talk about all of the things that make up Legal Ease, I'd love to hear a little bit more from you about your inspiration for the company. Absolutely. What sort of kicked it off? Like how did you get to where you are now?

Roger Roman 2:42

Yeah, so I can so I can I'll start at the very beginning. So I was born and raised in Chicago, west side of Chicago. I have to make that notation.

Aliya Cheyanne 2:51

Okay.

Roger Roman 2:52

You know, very, very loving family, huge family. And when I say big family, I only have one brother. Um, it was my my brother, my mother, and my father, but um, I had a bunch of cousins, right? So

Origins At Howard And Early Law Dreams

Roger Roman 3:03

my dad had nine sisters himself. My mom had six siblings. We all lived in a very close radius. So I grew up in a very big loving family. Throughout high school, I went to a private high school and it was it was majority white high school, and I got a scholarship and I was bust out there. And the whole time I was a child, like I was always very good in school, got good grades, and my family kind of put it on me that I was gonna be a lawyer, right? So as long as I could remember, that was the career choice. I I don't think I ever had any say in that. It was simply Roger's gonna be a lawyer. He likes to argue, he likes to talk, he loves reading.

Aliya Cheyanne 3:39

Yeah.

Roger Roman 3:40

So I went to my high school. It was good. It was very uh, what's the word? It was very strict, and it was a good education in the sense of traditional education, right? But I I felt I felt out of place because I was often one of the few black kids in my class, and I just kind of felt like every day I was holding the the world of the black community on my shoulders and defending us and all those things in class. Um, so I made a point that I was gonna go to a HBCU. I figured that out really early. I said, you know, I'm gonna go to a black college. I didn't know much. I had a few older cousins who went to college. Not many people in my family had had been college graduates, right? I did have one cousin, she went to Xavier, and a few others who went to state schools. So I didn't know much about HBCUs or the culture or anything about it beyond school days and the popular culture stuff. So one day I grabbed the U.S. News World Report college rankings, and I said, the first HBCU I see in these rankings, that's the school I'm gonna go to. And the only school I saw at the time, I'm pretty sure it's different now, was Howard, right? Howard, I think at the time was ranked like 80th in the top 100. And I said, Well, that's where I'm going. So I got to tell you that because this is where the story starts. It starts at Howard University. When I was there, very engaged, met a bunch of amazing people doing amazing things. Um, and I joined the mock trial team. While I was on the mock trial team, I joined, I met my friend, Lawrence, right? Lawrence, he was a couple of years younger than me, very driven, wanted to be an attorney, kind of hit it off. We were real cool. And uh, you know, I kind of took him under my wing as a as a as a friend. And that's really where this journey started. Um Lawrence is my co-founder at Legalese, and it's it's a full circle moment that we actually met doing my trial back then, right? So fast forward years later, it's time for me to go to law school, right? And you know, I take the LSAT, I do really well. But I'm I've kind of become disillusioned with the legal practice. Um, I had a few internships and, you know, I worked in a public defender's office. I worked at a big tech, big law firm, um, you know, a medium-sized firm. And at each stop, I just kind of became a little more and more disillusioned with becoming a lawyer. Lawrence, on the other hand, he was getting ready to apply to law school as well, but he ran into an issue. And I gotta tell this part of the story because it it's the it's the origin of um legalese. So one day when we were in undergrad, we were partying or whatever, you know, out on U Street doing our thing. And uh Lawrence got arrested. He got arrested, and I think he was relieving himself in the alley, and a police officer pulled up, and I think he mouthed off to the police officer. So he put cuffs on him, threw him in the back of the car. The case was dismissed, and he never told his parents about it. But when it was time for him to apply to law school,

Lawrence’s Arrest And The Cost Of Expungement

Roger Roman 6:26

um, he started to get worried. You know, he's like, I got this thing on my record, I have to disclose it. You know, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm probably not gonna get into the best law school or the school I could possibly get into because I have this record, right? So he told his parents, and his dad, who was an attorney, said, you know, I wish you would have told me sooner, but now that you've told me, you know, you could you should just get an expungement, right? He's like, I don't think it's gonna harm you in any way um necessarily, but if you get an expungement, you can make sure it won't hold you back down the line, right? So Lawrence called around um a bunch of attorneys, and some people charged him up, you know, $300 for consultations. And um eventually, I mean, he was quoted prices actually from like $1,500 at the low end to $5,000 at the high end. Yeah, crazy, right? I think eventually he found someone here in DC to um who did it, who performed the expungement for him and then helped him through it for like $2,500, right? So he got it off his record, went on to law school. Um, I moved to California. I was working in in tech, working at any startup I can get a job in, and then doing a bunch of different different roles. And oftentimes Lawrence would hit me up and say, Hey, I got this idea for a startup, right? I got this idea, you should check this out. Um, and most times, like most people, I'd be like, bro, that's not. You know, like stick to your stick to what you're doing. And that went on for a while. You know, he he was really interested in what what I was doing on the West Coast.

Aliya Cheyanne 7:51

And uh He had a vision.

Roger Roman 7:54

Eventually he graduated and he started practicing in a small town in Mississippi, in Canton, Mississippi. He was doing really well for himself. He actually invested in one of the startups that I was working on at the time. And I think that was just an excuse to keep keep hitting me up with ideas, right? He's like, oh yeah, I got a check for you. And one thing he kept coming back to, I know it took me a long time to get here, but I had to walk you through these spots, right? One thing he kept coming back to was expungements, right? He's like, dude, you know, I people call me, I get inbound, people cold call me for help with expungements all the time. It's like I'm charging them 1,500 bucks and I feel bad doing it because I'm not doing much, right? I ask them a few questions, I fill out a few forms, and then I charge them, right? And they pay me. Um he's like, in addition to that, do pro bono work at some of these with some some local organizations on the ground here who do the expungement clinics. Um, and he was like, the disheartening thing about that is we have lines out the door. The clinic might run from 8 to 12, and it's three attorneys who are volunteering their time, we're not getting paid for it. And most often we turn people away, right? We have to give them a card and say, call us later, so on and so forth. He's like, there's got to be some scalable solution to this. There's got to be something we can build. So after a bunch of pestering and text messages and hitting me up about it, um, I said, look, bro, you know, I'll build, I'll help you build an MVP. For your audience, if they're not familiar, MVP is um a minimally valuable product, minimal valuable product. But, you know, it's basically the most basic form to prove that your idea is valid and there's some demand for it. So I built an MVP for him and we put it on his law firm's website. And it was basically a quiz, you know, a third-party quiz that asked a few questions about your case and, you know, and helped you determine if you were eligible, but it wasn't

Building The MVP And Finding Demand

Roger Roman 9:40

100% accurate. Um, and then it was a form, right? Just a jot form that would collect the information that an attorney would usually collect from you, right? And I thought, you know, that was good. I I helped my boy out. He's good over there. I did my good deed, right? And a few months later, he hit me and he said, Look, bro, this has been amazing, right? He's like, I've had people calling me to use it. I've let organizations use it when I'm not even there. Like it really helps out a lot. It takes down our intake time. We can help more people. You know, it's I've used it in my personal private practice as well. You know, this is a startup, right? It's like, this is something that we can build on. I'm like, of course. To be completely transparent, I was still a bit skeptical.

Aliya Cheyanne 10:21

Yeah.

Roger Roman 10:21

Because I wasn't up on the market. I didn't know anything about the numbers or how many people were affected by it or how many people were actually seeking expungement. So at that point, I kind of did my due diligence and did some research in the space, and I saw that there was a gap in the market. And I told him, hey, we can build something with this, but what we have now is not a true scalable solution, right? So we had solved the onboarding process. We had solved the issue of getting information from the end user or the customer, right? Um, but we hadn't solved the back end, right? After people uploaded their information and they were deemed eligible, Lawrence was actually still on the hamster wheel because he was he was the one processing those expungements. And I said, for us to truly make this a startup, for us to truly make this a scalable solution, we have to automate the back-end process, right? We have to remove that complexity and automate as much of this as possible. And to be honest, we kind of stalled there for a while because you know we couldn't figure out, I couldn't figure out how how to make it smooth. And we were thinking nationwide, right? How can we make this something that can apply to every state? Well, every state is different. We're pretty much 50 different countries, right? Because we have different laws and different requirements around um around these cases. So it took some time. Eventually, we brought on our third co-founder, Rashid, Rashid Ali, who's amazing. He actually went to Howard with us as well.

Aliya Cheyanne 11:39

Awesome.

Roger Roman 11:39

But he's he's he's spent the last two decades building cloud infrastructure. He's worked for, you know, government. Um, he's been a consultant with Deloitte and Traveler's Insurance. Like he's built, he's been building these cloud infrastructures and more recently working with AI. So we brought him on and uh he solved it right away, right? He's like, you know, this is the the product roadmap, this is what you need, this is how we can make it secure, collect information, process it, so on and so forth. And it was it was really perfect timing because we had um been accepted into the Techstars economic development cohort in in New York. Techstars is an accelerator. If if you're familiar with Y Combinator or, you know, the Sauce and Friends and Family, these accelerators, they it's very hard to get into one. You know, I think it's like a 1 to 2% acceptance rate. They bring about 10 startups in every year. They give you coaching on becoming investor ready, getting your go-to-market stuff right, you know, kind of just figuring out how to launch and get off the ground. And they also make an investment, right? So we had a little bit of money and we we had our dev team working to build this 2.0. We

Solving The Back End And Adding Rashid

Roger Roman 12:43

went through Techstars, and most recently, we launched our 2.0, which was we're calling it 2.0 because it's not the MVP. We launched it in July of 2025. It's been uh received very well, right? We launched in Mississippi. My co-founder Lawrence, not only is he an attorney in Mississippi, but he's a state representative as well.

Aliya Cheyanne 13:04

Wow.

Roger Roman 13:05

So we launched there. And to our surprise, being the founder and being a person who's been through this and built companies, I was really expecting like a few hundred people to sign up, you know, and that would have been great, right? A few hundred people sign up in the first month, that would be great. We can build on that and learn some things and grow. But to my surprise, we had over 3,000 people sign up in the first two months.

Aliya Cheyanne 13:29

Wow.

Roger Roman 13:30

And of those, only a handful, I won't say a handful, but a few hundred were from Mississippi. The rest were from all over the country. I mean, from California to Jersey to Iowa to Texas and Florida, everywhere, pretty much people were signing up. Um, we even had to give some refunds out because people signed up and, you know, they paid money and they were like, oh, we're not active in your state. You know, we'll give you your money back and let you know when we when we launch in your state. So it's been great. To go into what we built legally, our 2.0 is basically um, we we built an AI agent. We named her Wilma, right? She's named after one of Lawrence's dad's uh assistants who passed away years ago from cancer. She battled cancer, but she was she was a linchpin in his in his practice, and his dad would always tell him, you know, if I had 10 Wilma's, you know, I could take over the world, right? So as a as a as a homage to her, we we named the bot Wilma. You come on a user, right, and you have a conversation with Wilma. She'll help you determine your eligibility. She'll answer any questions around the exponent process for you. Once you decide, you know, you find out if you're eligible, um, you go ahead and you pay the fee. And we have a flat fee of $150, which is a tenth of what you know a lot of attorneys are charging, maybe even more in some cases, right? And, you know, you give us the information, we generate the forms you need, and we put the power in the hand of the end user to go ahead and submit those forms to the court. In some states, we can actually e-file, you can pay your state fees and do everything directly

Techstars, Launch, And Unexpected Traction

Roger Roman 14:59

from our platform. In other states, depending on the county and the court, um, you may have to do, you know, you may have to print out the petition and the and and the order and actually submit it by by hands. Um, it's been very exciting. Like I said, you know, I uh it's been a lot of work, you know, as a founder. Anybody who's thinking about becoming a founder, please understand that you're gonna work, you're gonna put the work in. It's not a 40-hour a week thing, right? But um, I am excited. We are looking to to expand to five additional states. We are moving into Georgia, Illinois, Texas, California, and Maryland, and we're gonna keep going from there. So I know that was a long, long-winded spiel, but I just had to get you to where we are with legalese and how we got here.

Aliya Cheyanne 15:46

Listen, I appreciate, I'm here taking notes. I'm like, I appreciate everything and sharing that background. So much of what you sh what you shared is connecting to some other things I've heard. Like even the way that you, you know, grew up with a big family in Chicago. You might only have one sibling, but you had so many cousins. I was recently listening to an episode of a Michelle Obama's podcast with her brother, and they talk a lot about how they grew up with a village. Like it was just them as siblings, but they had so many cousins and uncles and aunts, and just felt a lot of that love growing up. So as you were sharing that, it made me think about that as well. And that's the experience of so many of my listeners too. We may only have a couple of siblings, but we grew up with a lot of cousins, or maybe there are some of us who wish we grew up that way because we didn't, you know.

Roger Roman 16:36

Right, right.

Aliya Cheyanne 16:37

And I think sometimes people think we're like so far removed from things from the past. But even hear you hearing you talk about the experience of having to be bussed to school, going through predominantly white school and having to be bused to that neighborhood for the school, like a lot of people think that's so far in the past, and it's really not. Like it's a reality for people. Yeah.

Roger Roman 17:01

I think for our generation and sp specifically, I'm I'm getting off the topic here, but like just as a parent. So I have three children, um, and you have a lot of friends and people who have children, you know, having a little bit of success in life, and you want to give your children uh better opportunities than you had, and you might think, oh, I want to send them to this school or this private school or this place, you know, and just because it might be better on paper, you know, the demographics of the school might not always be better. So it's it's something that a lot of people, I think, especially, you know, I'm a millennial, I'm I'm 41 years old, but um I think a lot of people in our generation are dealing with that.

Aliya Cheyanne 17:36

Yeah.

Roger Roman 17:36

Not only do we, you know, some of us have to deal with it ourselves, but you know, as parents, we're we're facing that that that conundrum as well. You know, I send my child to this school that has a ton

How LegalEase Works And Pricing

Roger Roman 17:47

of resources and costs a lot of money and all this great stuff, where there'll be a minority, right? And there'll be like an extreme minority, maybe one or two or three children in a class who look like them. Or do I send them to another school that might not have the resources, might not have the reputation, but they'll be surrounded by people who look. And it it's you don't think about it much until you're until you're in that space and you have to really consider and weigh the pros and cons of each.

Aliya Cheyanne 18:13

Absolutely. It makes me think about Nicole Hannah-Jones, who writes for the New York Times and Absolutely Project. And that's something she's spoken about in her work, like wanting to stay within her community and keep her child within the community despite the changes around it and being intentional about all of those factors. So it's very true what you said. And I appreciate that whole background because it really painted a picture for me, even thinking about your co-founders, Lawrence having this vision, having this experience, wanting to make a change before entering law school and being persistent about his vision and how easily you were able to create the MVP for his law firm to get the process started. And then eventually, like doing your market research and realizing, like, hey, there's a gap here. Let's figure out how we can actually make this viable and like make this work. And even your next co-founder coming on, Rashid, like having that experience with building like cloud infrastructure, like all of the pieces just fell into place. And it is so important. Even you talking about Lawrence practicing and being a state representative in Mississippi, many years ago in Alabama, when the Peace and Justice Memorial was founded by Brian Stevenson, it opened up a lot of discussion around what legal practices look like in those kinds of states, like a Mississippi and Alabama, and how hard and difficult it is for some people, especially in terms of basic needs, like how expensive it is to just get an expungement or how expensive it is to post very simple bail. And it's not just those places, it's New York too. We think about stories like Khalif Rowder not being able to post bail for something minute. So this is so needed and it's so important, and I think it's so brilliant. And I appreciate it. That background. Yeah.

Roger Roman 20:12

No, I appreciate it. And Mississippi is uh a peculiar place, right? Um, you know, it's great people, of course, right? You know, my my roots are in Mississippi. I'm from Chicago, so you know North North Jackson is what they call us in Chicago. But but, you know, there's a high incarceration rate. Um, and the courts are, I don't want to sound too derogatory, but I will say there's a lot of room for improvement in Mississippi, especially with the court system, right? You know, extreme, very high incarceration rate, socioeconomic uh disparities are great, right? Especially between races, right, and things like that. So we figured, not only with Lawrence being there and being from there and kind of being on the ground and being active, but we figured if we could make this

Why Mississippi First And Who Needs Expungement

Roger Roman 20:57

work in Mississippi, we could make it work anywhere. And just to give you some insight into like how this affects everyone, more people than I thought the things that kind of I was enlightened by uh when I did my research was that, you know, there are 70 million Americans in this country who have a record. That's one third. So one out of three people in this country have a record. And when I say a record, it's not just, you know, I was arrested, I was convicted, and I was spent time in jail. A lot of times in in certain states, even when you're just arrested, if it's dismissed or thrown out, as in Lawrence's case, it's still on your still comes up if someone does a background search on you. Um, so you know, any interaction where you are you are booked or they take a picture or take your fingerprints, whatever, that's in the system and that can follow you forever. Um, and it can affect like your housing, it can affect jobs, it can affect a lot of things, you know, in your life and hold you back. And some people, it's just a blemish on their record. They just don't want it there, right? Like you something that happened to them a few years ago or, you know, five, ten years ago. I'll give you two stories without saying names.

Aliya Cheyanne 22:02

Yes.

Roger Roman 22:03

One of our first customers, it's a lady, young lady, um, a few years younger than me. This was when we had our MVP. So like she was guinea pig, she she was down. She was one of Lawrence's customer, I mean, clients. And um, we told her about what we were doing and she was all in. But she was a CNA, right? So she was a nurse's assistant. She had been a nurse's assistant for years, and she wanted to pursue, you know, becoming an R N, or I don't know the exact hierarchy of how it works, but I think she wanted to become an R and she never pursued any opportunities, she never went to school for it. She never pursued any promotions or anything like that, or any internal, internal promotions and things, because she had this thing on her record from like 10 years before. And it wasn't that she applied and she got rejected. It was a mental block, right? So 10 years before that, her and the boyfriend at the time, they got into an argument at a restaurant. I think it got a little physical between them both, and they were both arrested. And they were both were charged with misdemeanor, like domestic violence. I don't know the exact charge, but it was something along those lines. Fast forward to now, those two people are married with children. You know what I mean? And like they're living their lives. But she has this mental block about applying because she has domestic violence on her record, and she says she doesn't even want people to even look at that. She's kind of like moved past it because it'll paint her in the light that she doesn't want to be in. So we helped her get an expungement so she could go ahead and move forward with her life, right? It was just, you know, get that mental block away from her and be able to go ahead and pursue those opportunities, even though she wasn't, she was never turned down for anything, but she never even tried because this thing was holding her back. And then there was another young man I spoke to recently, actually. He reached out to us and he made some mistakes 20 years ago. Um, he said he was a knucklehead, he was right in the streets and doing things that he shouldn't have been doing. And since then he's he's cleaned up his life. And this was 20 years ago, mind you. He's doing really well for himself. And he said he went to volunteer to coach his son's Little League football team, Pee-Wee football team. And you know, you have to do a background check. And he was denied, he couldn't coach his son's team because of the stuff that he did in the past, right? Even though it was 20 years ago, even though, you know, he had moved completely on beyond it. He's an entrepreneur now, he's built a successful business. Um he's like, dude, I gotta get this stuff off my record, man. You know what I mean? It's because, you know, I was really looking forward to that opportunity, and I can't even do that. So it's something that we've seen that affects people in various ways. Like I said, you know, whether it's getting a home loan or a rent-to-own loan, it can affect you there, it can affect your job. I mean,

Real Stories Of Barriers And Second Chances

Roger Roman 25:20

it just holds people back. And it's not, it's not a loophole, right? It's not some finesse of the system. This is a right, right? This is written into law. It's your right. There are only a certain number of charges that are expungible, right? So you can't get violent offenses expunged. You can't get like, you know, assault or sexual assault or, you know, anything like that or anything harming children. Those things can be expunged, but like petty theft, shoplifting, all these small misdemeanors that shouldn't be a stain on your record. You shouldn't have to pay for that for the rest of your life. Those are the things that that are typically expongible offenses.

Aliya Cheyanne 25:55

Yeah, yeah, that's really powerful. Thank you for sharing those examples because I know there's someone listening who knows a story like that or maybe has had a similar experience, and you really don't think about how your record might impact certain things. Like even going to want to coach Pee Wee football, like you don't think about stuff like that. So it's just very interesting. And you again raising the point around like doing the research. So for anyone who is interested in becoming a founder or launching a new business or a brand, like being aware of what the gaps are and like doing your actual research about it is really important. We've had a guest in the past, Kat Sterling, who's the CEO of New Spera, which is like a wellness coffee company. But she talked about that a lot, like doing your research and making sure that what you're envisioning will have an impact and you have a customer base for it. Because it's one thing to have the idea and the envision, but if you don't have a base who actually needs what you're providing, then you might land on some hard times.

Roger Roman 26:53

Yeah. And as a person, as a person who's started a bunch of business that have failed.

Aliya Cheyanne 26:58

Yeah.

Roger Roman 26:58

I like the joke that I failed my way to success, right? I think that's one of the most, especially, especially with black entrepreneurs. I think um, you know, following trends and just trying to hop on the latest trend is a fatal mistake. One, because you're entering crowded markets and it's not, it can be something that people don't necessarily need. So I my my advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to find a problem. Find a problem and then try to solve that problem. And that's probably where you're gonna find the most success. You know, if you just build the the next thing and there's a hundred competitors out there, not to say that you can't be successful in that space, you know, because who am I to say that, right? But it's gonna be a lot harder to really break through and and get some success in that space if you don't, if you're not really attacking it where there is a gap. One of the examples I like to look at is Calendly, right? And and the brother who started it. Um, you know, it wasn't, if you would have told you that I'm building a calendar scheduling company, most people would have, eyes would have glazed over and they'd went, oh, whatever, because it wasn't, you know, sexy, right? It wasn't this exciting thing. But here he is now, valued at over billions of dollars and immensely successful because he decided to go ahead and find this space where people were having some friction, there was some problem, and he had an easy solution to it. I think he was helped out too by um the pandemic at the time. So timing is is one of the things as well, right? If you can if you can get in there in the right time and everything, but that comes with research, right? If you if you're if you're researching the market and you understand what you're looking for and looking to build, you can make timing work. Um, I feel like we're at the perfect time for what we're building

Entrepreneur Lessons: Research, Timing, Grit

Roger Roman 28:33

with legalese as well.

Aliya Cheyanne 28:35

Yes, absolutely. A perfect storm and in the best way. And I think even with that example, I think there were people who didn't take him seriously in the beginning. I remember reading about that as well, but the timing did work in his favor. And now there are so many platforms that are rolling out like booking options and scheduling options. But yeah, and I think there's so much power in failing too. Like when you listen to, well, not you particularly, but I listen to podcasts like Aspire and Diary of a CEO and like all these different ones. Like so many people talk about their failures and how they've learned from that and how it takes a certain type of grit and spirit to keep going despite the the failures and like learning from them. You don't become a successful entrepreneur overnight, you fail several times, yeah. It takes before you get there.

Roger Roman 29:23

So it takes 10 years at least to become an overnight uh success, right? Um and I think I talked about this before with a few people, but there's a balance. There's no magic bullet. You have to be able to know when to keep going and then understand when you know you hit that brick wall and there's no, there's nowhere else to go. And it's a it's a really fine line to balance because you have to be resilient. You know, the first time you get punched, you got to keep going, you got to keep going, you got to keep going. But you gotta also on the other end of that understand, okay, I've put in everything that I can. I understand this market, I don't have the resources, or you know, there isn't a market for it, or you know, people aren't biting. I need to pivot to something else or go to something else. And there is no magic timeline, right? Like you just gotta be able to fill it. And I think the more prepared you are, the more you understand what you're building, the easier it is to make that those decisions and have that discernment. So, one for sure, being resilient, believing in yourself, betting on yourself. But like any athlete would tell you, you know, the more you're in the gym or the more you're working out, the more you're practicing, the more confident you are in the field or or on the court or wherever, right? And I think it's the same thing with entrepreneurship. The more you understand what you're doing and and where you're going, the better idea you have of how successful this gonna this is gonna be. And, you know, if if there's a chance of success and and how small that chance is and how long it's gonna take.

Aliya Cheyanne 30:42

Yeah, absolutely. It's like building a muscle. It's it's very true. Thank you for that. This this has been so good, but I want to dive a little bit more into the AI side of this. Absolutely. So we're, you know, you've talked a lot about how Legal Ease is using AI and automation to better support people when it comes to expungements. And AI is a powerful tool. It can help us with a lot of things as we've seen. At the same time, there are a lot of people who have distrust around AI, uncertainty around AI, and all of those things. I love the story that you shared of Lawrence's dad's late assistant and how you named your AI bot for legal ease, Wilma, after her. It reminds me a lot of an episode I'd done previously about Afrofuturism. And my guest on that episode talked

AI Hopes, Fears, And Responsible Use

Aliya Cheyanne 31:34

a lot about how it's important for us to be represented in the space of AI. It's very easy for us to be left out, to not have a seat at the table, for all the decisions that are being made about AI to like not include us, which is crazy. My guest at that time was Minister Jazz, and she talked a lot about launching her business much different and being inclusive with AI. So I love the story you tell about how you've made your bot like an homage to someone who actually really mattered and did a lot of beautiful things. But how do you sort of balance the use of AI and automation with people who might have real fears around surveillance, around data collection, privacy, AI, all of those things? Like how do you walk that line?

Roger Roman 32:19

Yeah, it's interesting. And I think a lot of those fears are valid. So I'll say that. Just say that um off top. AI, the issue with AI is that there are adversarial people who are using it to hurt people, right? There are people who are using it to take away opportunities, to take away chances and all those things. Um, and it's very foul, it's a it's probably the most powerful technology or invention or whatever that's been created since maybe even better, bigger than the internet, right? It might be the biggest one since electricity. Um, I think it's gonna have a profound effect on the future and how we how we live and how societies operate. So I'll say that I think for us, for the people, right, if we're not using it to build systems and build tools to help us, um, we're only gonna be victims.

Aliya Cheyanne 33:07

Yes.

Roger Roman 33:08

Um, you know, and I think that's really important. So, you know, while there are people and and people who, you know, and companies who are using this to harm folks or to hold people back, I think we have to have uh an equal amount of people who are building it and using these tools to help us. Um in regards to the fears around using it, that was really big in Mississippi um launching. A lot of people say, I don't want to talk to a bot, I want to talk to a human. And we had to really massage that. And I think other places might be a little more acceptable. And I will say to the credit, things are changing really fast. So people are becoming more and more welcoming or into dealing with AI. But I look at it kind of like the analogy I use a lot, and I'll use it again, is the calculator, right? When we were in school, calculators were, you know, don't use a calculator, show your work, do the math, because one day when you're an adult, you're not gonna have a calculator on you. And we all have a calculator on us, right? Yes, every day, all the time. And I I use mine, I'm pretty sure other people use theirs as well. I mean, I look at AI the same way. It's something that we can't avoid. It's here, like you can't even perform a simple Google search without an AI summary, right? So if we're not we're not in line, if we're not here and we're not prepared to use these tools to help us, then I think we're just gonna be victims. Um and and you know, it's it's really gonna hold us back. So I'm a cautious proponent of AI. Um, and I know that sounds weird building an AI company because I do know the power that's there. I do know that, you know, if we get to AGI or ASI, artificial superintelligence, it could be just like a sci-fi movie and the AI could take over and we can have the Terminator situation.

Aliya Cheyanne 34:53

That's me all day.

Roger Roman 34:56

And I mean, look, look, we're we're we're we're so close. I don't I don't think we realize because we're in the moment, you know, how far and how fast this thing is going. Like this company that we built couldn't have been built three years ago just because the technology didn't exist, right? Lawrence was hitting me up about this for a while, and I was like, well, I don't know how we're gonna be able to solve for every state because it's different. And then here comes OpenAI with their LLM. And when we first started, it was very stupid, right? In terms of like trying to build on it and it didn't work. And like, well, let's just start with one state. We'll train our agent on one state, and then if if things improve from there, we we can go

Human-Centered Design And Escalation Paths

Roger Roman 35:32

further. It's a very precarious thing. I think we gotta wear our gloves when we're handling it. And I think the more people we have building for help and building to help people and um in that space with AI, I think the better we'll be in the long term. But you know, I'm I'm not 100% convinced that you know 50 years, 100 years down the line where we all won't be enslaved by some AI. I know I shouldn't say that as an AI founder, but it did the technology is so so smart, man. It's so smart. And even Lawrence as an attorney, you know, will we draft some stuff up and he'll say, Man, this did better than I could do as an attorney. Um, you know, so Yeah.

Aliya Cheyanne 36:14

It's growing fast and not without its imperfections because there are things even Chat GPT gets wrong.

Roger Roman 36:21

Right.

Aliya Cheyanne 36:21

But it's but it is fast, you know, the way that it's growing. In a past episode, I've had Dominique Lester on, who is an archivist. Um, and we were talking about like how AI is impacting the archiving industry. Like, is it like what does it look like, especially in the digital realm? And she made the comparison in a way that you've also made a comparison to the calculator, but she talked about it as it being a new form of technology in the same way that the wheel was way back when, in the same way that when the internet was born, we had no idea what it would look like today. So that's very true. I do think it's important for ethically minded people to be at the helm of a lot of this because when you have it in the hands of people who are supervillains, then that's what it's gonna become. So I love to see uses of AI that are helping people who are deeply impacted by the systems that shape our life every day. Absolutely. Um and I'm excited for legal ease to expand to more states so that more people can have access to this tool to get simple misdemeanors or small offenses off of their record so that it can continue to transform and improve their livelihoods. Because as you said, it impacts everything employment, housing, everything. And it's really sad, but I'm glad that we are in a space where we have this tool and it's ever expanding, and people who might be eligible, who can benefit from it might be able to use it. So that's really powerful. I would love to to talk to you about a couple of things before we wrap up. So you mentioned that a lot of people, especially in Mississippi, when you first got started, were a little bit skeptical about talking to a bot, and eventually those fears alleviated. They wanted more of a human touch and eventually came around to using this tool, this AI tool. But I am curious about how you are ensuring that legal ease remains human-centered and has a human touch, despite the AI and the automation.

Roger Roman 38:28

Right. So everything, even with how we have trained Wilma and and programmed her,

Community, HBCU Networks, And Team Building

Roger Roman 38:33

uh we we programmed her intentionally to speak to people and make it plain, right? Um it's a play on our name, right? Legalese. Like we take all of that out. Um, and she talks to you. And if you have a conversation with her, you feel like you're talking with a with a friend, you know, it doesn't talk like GP chat GPT, right? It doesn't have the very artificial and surface level, but like it's it's really a deep conversation.

Aliya Cheyanne 38:57

Yeah.

Roger Roman 38:58

And there's a lot of empathy built into it. In terms of like just the the human touch for a startup, we do have like a tier that people can can use if they want to have more of a human touch, right? Um, it costs more, right? Just because there's more expense there. So if if if there's a person who doesn't feel confident or they just they want they rather have someone kind of help them along, we have an option for that. I do think over time, less and less people will choose that option. And more people will choose the do-it-yourself option where they can just work directly with the bot. But it's really just uh about how you build, right? We've built a company and we have an ethos of and we're we're committed to it. We've had some opportunities that wanted to take us away from that, and we we we turned it down. But we built our company essentially to help people handle handle non-complex legal matters without the help of an attorney, right? So we we are empowering you, we're giving you all the resources to go out and do this thing yourself. I mean, I think that is the most empathetic and human we can be in giving someone those resources, right? As opposed to charging them a fee and giving them a service, and then they walk off and they don't know anything else. They just know if I pay this person, they can do it for them. Now they've been equipped, they've done it before. They can go back into their community or their family and say, hey, I needed an expungement. I went through legalese, and this is what the process is, and this is how you do it. So there's a teaching component there as well. Um similar to LegalZoom, right? LegalZoom is a web um Web 1.0, Web 2.0. It's it's been around for decades, right? LegalZoom has been around. Um, and you can go there and you can start your LLC, you can start your corporation, right? But you can also just go to your state's attorney's office and do it as well, right? But LegalZoom has built built a way that makes it easy. They walk you through it, you know what I mean? And they've been able to build a company that I think made $25 million last quarter around it, right? And been able to survive several dot-com busts and all those things. And we look at it the same way, right? Similar to TurboTax. You're not an accountant, you're not a CPA, right? Yeah. But we all feel empowered to go ahead and handle our income taxes ourselves, right? We can just get on turbotax, walk through it. Now, of course, if there's some complications or there's some complexity to it, you know, then you go get a CPA because we don't want to go to jail or, you know, you don't want to get in trouble with the IRS. So like there's always that level of escalation, and as we expand, we're building out, building that out more and more. Um, for instance, in Ohio, you know, we're we're looking to expand into Ohio and their process is a little different than most other states where, you know, they often require a hearing for an expungement, right? Um, so you know, our workflow for Ohio is a little bit different, where there's more opportunity for a person to get some some real life guidance and and and real life uh balance around those hearings where they have to appear in person. So it's really just building for the customer and building for the problem. Problem comes, we solve it. Um, and and I think that's kind of the best approach. That's the approach we've taken as we've built this company.

Aliya Cheyanne 42:43

Yeah, I think that's really powerful. And I I like the examples you shared around a legal Zoom or TurboTax, like in terms of making it a bit more accessible to people to do something that they might not be historically trained or certified or educated to do. I think that's really powerful. And I'm just kind of curious, are you also like tapped into or working with like a network of like lawyers or attorneys in these different states too? So in in no, not no, so we are not in situations like Ohio where it's like There's a caveat, right?

Roger Roman 43:17

So we work, we work, we don't necessarily work with like a network of attorneys. We're not like referring attorneys. And again, that goes back to our ethos, right? We're not we're building to help the person solve it without hiring an attorney, right?

Legacy, Goals, And Empowerment

Roger Roman 43:29

But we do understand that there's some escalation. We do work with organizations though. Um we lean heavily on some of these nonprofit organizations in these places that have networks of attorneys that they can refer to their members if if something is is escalated, right? Um and that's been better for us. That's been more, you know, in terms of aligning with our mission and our goal. Um we've had a lot of people who have presented us with opportunities to become a lawyer referral service or do these things. And while it seemed lucrative in the moment, long term it's not really what we want to build. So just having those principles and being able to stand on it have been important for us. Um we feel like there there are enough organizations out here who are on the ground doing the work that we can partner with them, offer our services with them. And if they, you know, if they have those networks, if they have those referral services, then we can lean on them for that as opposed to trying to build it ourselves, right? We're here to solve this issue and to empower people to do it themselves.

Aliya Cheyanne 44:26

Yeah, yeah, that's wonderful. And thank you for that correction because it's also, yes, again, building a platform so that people don't have to go that route. I was just curious about like in those situations of escalation, but I think it's even more meaningful and powerful that you're connected to a network of nonprofits that already have that infrastructure built in place to support people. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like that also just kind of goes back to your HVCU origin around this and making the connections and like really centering a community-minded mission and helping communities really be empowered to solve their own issues, to lead a horse to water, to teach a person.

Roger Roman 45:07

You know, I've never interested interesting point. I never really thought about it like that. But now that I'm thinking about it, I think, I think there's some truth to it, right? There, that that's very valid um in the sense of like, hey, you know, I I can I can I can build it myself. Um, and I also I can lean on community as well, right? And and yeah, and work with these organizations. I think um, yeah, I I give I give Howard a little bit of credit there. Yeah, a little bit. A little bit, a little bit of credit, a little bit of credit. I love I love my I love my school, man. I do think just the importance of community though, right? Mm-hmm. In a broader sense, right, there's always been this criticism of the tech industry about hiring from within the the whole Stanford pipeline and being in Silicon Valley and all those things. And I've been very critical of it over the years, extremely critical because there's a lot of gatekeeping. But what I've realized. Building this company that's been moderately successful since we launched, it's about your community and your networks, right? So if you don't have anybody in those networks outside of your community, it's really hard to go and find them and have a level of trust there. For us, you know, and building our team, like I said, you know, I went to Howard, my co-founders both went to Howard. And everybody who we've brought onto the team since then has been, you know, a degree of

Founder Self-Care And Family Boundaries

Roger Roman 46:24

connection with one of us, right? Everyone's not an HBCU grad, but we do have a bunch of HBCU grads working. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. Because that's part of our community and that's what we know. So I do think community and everything is there. And I think I do love the fact that um we're able to take advantage of that. And there's so many talented people around us in our sphere that we can come together and work, um, you know, and then at the same time be willing to hire people outside of our sphere, right? So one of my lead developers is from Ethiopia. He actually still lives in Ethiopia. Um, he's not an HBCU grad, right? But he's worked with Rashid before, and you know, there's there's a connection there as well. So community is big, it's it's always gonna be a big driver in what we do and um and how we build.

Aliya Cheyanne 47:06

Yeah, absolutely. And we were talking about it a little bit before the show, but my sister's a Howard Groud too, and I'm like, I did not go to Howard, I did not go to HVCU, but every opportunity I get, I think we'll talk about it. You got a sister, your family. Okay, yes, thank you. So I love that. And it speaks a lot to the power of network. I saw this post on TikTok the other day where one person was expressing like their regret around not going to either an HVCU or just a bigger type of school because of the network and the connections that come out of it. And a lot of people understand that really well before they go to school, and a lot of people don't until after. And as someone who did not go to like a big school in that degree, I think about that sometimes too in my career after school. And it's true. Sometimes the connections that come out of it, the networks, everything, it allows you to find your people along the way. It's a platform where you can share what your business ventures are, like as you're bringing new things online and all of that. So I think it's really, really cool.

Roger Roman 48:09

It's exciting too. But I will say, watching my my um classmates through the years, and when we first graduated, everyone's trying to climb and you know, you don't really hear much, and everyone's trying to work in their industry or their chosen field. And then here we are, graduated in 2007. So almost 20 years later, right? Here we are 20 20 years later almost. And to see people just crazy successful and you know to to reach those those heights, and you know, there's so many people who are doing amazing things in whatever field they're in. That's really inspirational. I I literally just had a conversation with a friend of mine from Howard about that, about one of our other friends and how proud we were of him because you know it was touch and go for him for a while. Um and he's really, really doing great things now in in his field. So I think there's some truth to that. I'm not gonna say that every experience at HBCU is a great experience. There's always some some some some bad or a downside to it. But for me, going to Howard was probably one of the best decisions I've made in my life, to be honest with you.

Aliya Cheyanne 49:10

Wow, wow. And to think about your origin of even finding Howard, like checking that list of the top 100 schools, and Howard, even if it was whatever number was, 80, whatever, was the first one you saw. The first one I saw.

Roger Roman 49:23

I think it was the only one on the list at the time.

Aliya Cheyanne 49:26

Only one on the list at the time. Wow.

Roger Roman 49:28

Take that Hampton. Take that Hampton.

Aliya Cheyanne 49:31

And who knew? Look at you now, look at where you've ended up, look at what you've created and the connections you've made, the friendships, the co-founders, everything really powerful. As we start to wrap up, I want to ask you two last questions. One of them is around legacy. So I think a lot about legacy, especially um for entrepreneurs, especially for black people and people of color, like what we want our mark to be when we leave it behind. So I would love to ask you what legacy do you hope

Expansion Plans And Stay Connected

Aliya Cheyanne 50:43

legal ease leaves behind?

Roger Roman 50:46

Gotcha. Whew, that's a that's a deep question. So I would say, you know, the legacy that we want to build is empowerment, right? I think that's kind of the key to everything that we've done. We want to remove the gates and remove the blockades that are in front of people to get these small legal matters taken care of that are holding them back and allow them to live a better life and have a healthier life and a more unfulfilling life. I think empowerment is really what we're focused on. Um, and at the end of the day, when we become a huge corporation and, you know, we've helped millions of people. I want that to still be our driving ethos. One of our internal goals is to help uh one million people expunge their record by 2030, right? And that the effect of that will reverberate not only in those people's personal lives, but in our economy, improving, improving everything across the board. So empowerment, I think that's the one word that keeps popping up in my head when you think about legacy. We want to be able to empower people, man, and and give them the resources to to handle these things on their own.

Aliya Cheyanne 51:52

Yes, yes, I love that. And I think that that's so true, and that's really powerful, and I think that matters and what a huge goal. I'm so excited to see Legal Ease achieve it by 2030, and I'm excited for the ripple effect of that because that changes a lot of things economically. It does for a lot of people. So that's really powerful. Okay, so you talked a lot about how much hard work, blood, sweat, and tears you've poured into LegalEase, you and your co-founders. I'm always very curious when it comes to entrepreneurs and founders, like how folks are taking care of themselves and staying centered with all of the work on their plate. Um, for you, that could look like what's bringing you joy right now. Or what does self-care like staying grounded actually look like for you with everything that you have to juggle?

Roger Roman 52:44

Wow. So I will say that I historically have not done a great job of taking care of myself, right? You just it's hard, right? And you're working crazy. I will say over the last year or so, I've tried to do better at the behest of my wife and my mom and my family.

Aliya Cheyanne 53:05

Yeah.

Roger Roman 53:05

And I think it's important because you're gonna lose some things, right? You know, if you're building a company, let's just be real, right? Like the whole work-life balance, I think that works if you're working a role. Um, if you have a job that you can like cut off. Um and I think that works for a lot of people, right? Most people I know have jobs and they're not entrepreneurs. When you're an entrepreneur, there's really never a moment to cut off. And I find myself any moment that I can get, any free time I can get, I'm pulling up my laptop or I'm on my phone or trying to figure it out. But I do think the one non-negotiable or the one time where I can really shut it off and just kind of be a normal person is um interacting with my children and with my family, with my wife as well, right? So I have three children. Um, they range in age from 10, 6, and 3. And they have a lot of activities, right? So the weekends, even though I can't say I don't work on weekends because I still work, if they have something, whether it's a soccer game or basketball game or whatever, I'm all in on that, right? So like we're there, I'm all in. I I pick one of my children up from school every day, and you know, I don't take calls while she's in the car. You kind of focus on that. Um, the same thing with after school activities and things like that. Like, so when I'm with, when I'm dead, I try to be fully attentive as dead. Now that's not to say sometimes at basketball practice, I might pull out my laptop while while they're practicing or something like that. Um, because you're always on as an entrepreneur and things always need to be done. You got to put out fires. Uh but I do try to find a solid balance. Or if I'm spending time with my wife and you know, we're watching a movie or something, I put the phone away, I put it on do not disturb.

Aliya Cheyanne 54:38

Yeah.

Roger Roman 54:38

Um just kind of focus on that and really be in tune. So family, family is really the best respite for me. In terms of health, you know, I'm I'm doing better. I go to them more than I did before. So that's that's an improvement. You gotta start somewhere, right? Gotta start somewhere. And then just kind of one thing that I've done recently or started to do recently is just kind of take moments of silence, right? So I'll I'll I'll take 15 minutes, 20 minutes to just kind of sit with no sound, no, no podcasts, no music, and really just kind of give my brain a chance to just think and and not even sometimes not even think, right? Just kind of shut off and just look out into this daydream, right? And yeah, I guess that's a form of meditation, but it's been very helpful. You know, it gives me it kind of gives me a break in between switching from roles and it allows me to really just kind of calm down. And a lot of times, some of my best ideas come in that in those moments. And it's not a um, I haven't standardized it, right? So it's not like, oh, this is my break time. It could happen. I might get to the office and sit in the car for 20 minutes, right? And I just cut the car off and I'm just sitting there before I walk into the office. And when I get out and I walk in, I feel a lot more refreshed. Um, that's really it. But it's important. I had a I had an emergency um health scare last year um for me not taking care of myself, right? And and it really kind of put things into place for me um in terms of of that. So more attentive. I can't say that I'm 100% um and I I'm fully locked in, but I I've tried to take baby steps and that's all we can do, right? Just do a little better. It's hard though. You work 60, 70, 80 hours a week, man. It's hard to find that balance. And like I said, most entrepreneurs, you're gonna lose out socially, um, you're gonna lose out your family, you're gonna lose out health. One of those things you're gonna lack, right? There's no, there's really no way to have a balance across those, right? So it's really about you as an entrepreneur being able to weigh what's important in the moment, what's important now, um, and and really work around.

Aliya Cheyanne 56:41

Yeah, especially in the in the starting stages, the early stages when you're really trying to build. But I commend you for doing a little bit better every day, especially having a rude awakening like a a health scare, yeah. Kind of demanding you to make certain changes and your family supporting you along the way. I I love that you're finding joy in being present with your kids, with your wife. And I love the way you spoke about meditation or daydreaming or mindfulness. Like that's really important to a couple of folks I've had on the show before. Ebony Janice Moore, who is the founder of the Free People's Project, talks a lot about daydreaming, resting your mind, allowing yourself to have some space to just breathe and just be, because that's what our purpose is ultimately. And Jennifer Roberts, who's the founder of the Color Girls Liberation Lab, which is based in the DMV area, in case your wife wants to check it out, I highly recommend talks a lot about daydreaming and having the space to just take a moment to yourself, like not listening to anything else but you, just being with your thoughts. So I think that's really powerful too. And I've heard a lot of entrepreneurs talk about how hard it is to find a balance, and maybe balance is not the right word, but having some sort of devotion or discipline to having a routine. Yeah. So forcibly building that time in if you if it means waking up earlier.

Roger Roman 58:05

Yeah, absolutely. And that's what it's meant for me, to be honest with you. Like, you know, I'm a I'm a pretty early riser. Uh some people think I'm crazy, but like I'm up without an alarm clock. I'm up at about 4 30, 445. That's that doesn't mean I'm out of the bed, but I'm up, right? I'm up at that time. Um, and that's a lot of time where it's quiet, it's quiet in the house, it's quiet outside. I'm not getting emails, and I can kind of just really, really take some time to get there. But I think work-life balance for an entrepreneur is a myth. I think there's always going to be some imbalance. I think there's always gonna be some some disproportionate amounts of time that you're spending on your business. And I don't yeah, I don't think you should feel bad about that. I think, like you say, you just have to be intentional about making sure you're present in those other moments and getting the most from them, right? You know, I don't, I don't spend as much time with friends. I don't have as much of a social life as I did before, you know, I was an entrepreneur.

Aliya Cheyanne 59:00

Yeah, yeah.

Roger Roman 59:01

I catch up, but when I do catch up with my friends and I'm I'm around family and things like that, I make sure that I am present because those moments are, you know, they're precious, right? They they they really mean something. And I want to get full value from and deliver my full self as well. So even if it's not as much, right? My my people know, like they know, you know, Roger, he might show up, he might not, who knows? He got kids, he got all this other stuff going on. But when I'm there, I'm there. Um and I think that's really important for entrepreneurs.

Aliya Cheyanne 59:30

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's really good advice. So, current and future founders, you're you're hearing about the the duality about holding the title of entrepreneur and like maintaining the rest of your life. So that's something to think about too. Roger, before we wrap up, was there anything else about legal ease that you didn't get to share that's really pressing on your mind or your heart to share that you want folks to know, make sure they walk away with from this conversation?

Roger Roman 59:59

If we are not active in your state, or if you're not one of those five states that we're coming to, please visit our website, sign up because we're we're we're planning to be active across the country in the next six to 12 months, right? By the by the end of 2026, you know, we want to be active in every state and helping everybody. And even if there's some wonky laws in some states that they don't have expungements, they have record ceiling, or there's a Clean Slate Act that's being passed. I think Illinois is voting on it right now. Even in those cases, there's always people who fall between the cracks and they have to petition for an expungement. And I know the lawyers are gonna hate me for this, but you don't have to go out and pay, you know, thousands of dollars to an attorney. This is something that you can actually handle yourself, and we'll give you all the tools to do that. So even if we're not in your state today, I would say create an account so we can update you and let you know when we're active in that state. Even if you're not eligible, right? One of the things that we built in recently, one of the features is that for people who aren't eligible at the moment, with your permission, we'll take your your information and we'll reach out to you when you are eligible. So if you're eligible next month or in a year from now or two years from now, you'll get an email from Wilma saying, Hey, it's all the clock is ticking, you'll be eligible for an expungement on this date. Do you want to proceed? So on and so forth. Um, that's the biggest thing. Take this matter and do it because it's your right. You have the right to do it. Don't have to keep this stuff over you and and and and following you everywhere you go.

Aliya Cheyanne 1:01:23

Yeah, that's really powerful. And what a cool feature. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. This has been such a rich and informative conversation. I can't thank you enough for taking some time to chat and to share more about your background, but also the creation of legalese and the impact it's having in a few states now and eventually all 50. We're super excited. And I just think this is such a powerful tool. And I know that so many people, one out of three, will hopefully be able to use this tool someday. So thank you. Absolutely. Can you let folks know where to find more information about you directly or exactly what to check out if there are any social media profiles for LegalEase in addition to the website? Anything else you want to share?

Roger Roman 1:02:09

Yeah, so I would say the best route to go is to our website, legalease.com. Um, you can find our socials on there as well. We're on Facebook, we're on LinkedIn, Instagram, and all those. Our names are slightly different, so I don't want to go through all of the handles for those.

Aliya Cheyanne 1:02:22

Yeah, I'll list them in the show notes, so it's totally fine.

Roger Roman 1:02:25

Yeah, yeah, the names are slightly different. But if you if you need any information, follow us. I am on social media, but I'm not very active. Uh, I think the best place to find me is LinkedIn. You can just search my name. That's probably I treat my wife jokes that I'm I'm on LinkedIn like it's Instagram, right? Or it's TikTok, but that's just where I live.

Aliya Cheyanne 1:02:43

There are LinkedIn influencers, so it's okay.

Roger Roman 1:02:45

Exactly, exactly. So I think the best place to find me is LinkedIn. I mean, you can just Google my name or or or go to LinkedIn and search Roger Roman. I'm there. I'm pretty responsive there as well, too. So if you want some advice as an entrepreneur or you're looking a partner or whatever, that's probably the best place to reach out. Um, yeah, don't slide into DMs, man, because I I I go into my Instagram DMs and I'm like, oh, this person reached out to me three months ago, right? Missed that opportunity. You know what I mean? So um LinkedIn is the best place. But yeah, legalease.com, you know, legaleese.com is it's a play on the word. That's the best place to find any information about the company. And if you want to follow me or my co founder, Lawrence, he's on LinkedIn as well. You can follow us there.

Aliya Cheyanne 1:03:28

Amazing. And I will be sure to link all of that in the show notes as well. Thank you again for this incredible conversation. And to everyone listening, I hope to catch you on the next episode.

Roger Roman 1:03:39

Thanks. Thanks, Aliya.

People on this episode

Aliya Cheyanne

Host

Roger Roman

Guest

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