“My lawyer is awesome” – I bet that isn’t something which too many people can say!
I have been self-employed for the last four years, working either as a consultant or contractor to DeNA, SCEA San Diego, TD Securities, Prizorgo, Ethereum Foundation, ConsenSys and Sweetbridge. That after 18 years as a full-time employee to Sony Psygnosis and EA.
By late 2015 I was feeling the pain of the lack of basic technical competence amongst lawyers and accountants as I was running my small business. I needed more, so I asked the Ethereum community for help on Reddit as the New Year approached:
Have you met blockchain savvy accountants and lawyers in Canada?
Do have a read of the responses to that thread. This was my favorite:
So I didn’t actually make any change at that point, due to mixture of lack of options and also getting busy with other things, but as the 2018 financial year approached I left it was time to revisit this question, so I asked Reddit again and this time I got a great answer:
Deja Vu – Have you met blockchain savvy accountants and lawyers in Canada? 2017 edition
The way in which Bijou was introduced to me immediately gave me a great feeling. Her contact options included PGP encrypted email and Signal. Excellent – some opsec – this is going to be good! I was not wrong.
So I retained Bijou in January of this year and have been working with her since as I have worked through working out what I want to do with myself. The first thing which I asked her to do was to look at options for single-individual non-profit organizations in Canada, both federally and provincially. The Summerwill Foundation or whatever. That is not something which I will be pursuing right now, but I wanted to look into that option.
So she did some legal research for me on that, which I am happy to share with the world, subject to this disclaimer:
Canadian Non-Profit Options – BGL
This document was produced by B.G.L. Legal Consulting. The opinions expressed in this document are current as of January 25, 2018, and are subject to change. This document has been prepared solely for information purposes and for the use of the reader. Nothing in this material constitutes legal, accounting or tax advice, or a personal recommendation to the reader. Reliance upon information in this material is at the sole discretion of the reader.
This document may not be reproduced either in whole, or in part, without the written permission of the authors and B.G.L. Legal Consulting.
More recently, Bijou has been helping me with legal work around Varro Technologies, the new company which I have co-founded with Alison Alexis, who has a background as an accountant – hurrah!
So, if you are looking for a digital native who can actually help you as a partner with your blockchain needs, I would recommend that you get in touch with Bijou. Finally I have a legal professional who I consider as a partner, not as a liability.
She tells me that she is dealing with clients in Canada, the USA and Hong Kong so far.
Bijou Lee on LinkedIn, Twitter (@crypto_lawyers) and Website (bgl.legal).
Bob's Blog 