Legal Advice for Professional Mers

[officialmermaidkelly]

I thought it may be a good idea to have a thread for legal advice. So many people get put in fishy situations due to lack of understanding of the laws, regulations, etc for pro mers and often times end up being screwed over or scammed. I'm not sure if there is already a thread for this but I personally have been put in a few bad situations and am learning from them to better my own business and help up and coming mers.

[Slim]

The knowledge obtained within this thread could actually be useful. Considering the many times people make false claim about people without proof, people do have to protect themselves.

I thought it may be a good idea to have a thread for legal advice. So many people get put in fishy situations due to lack of understanding of the laws, regulations, etc for pro mers and often times end up being screwed over or scammed. I'm not sure if there is already a thread for this but I personally have been put in a few bad situations and am learning from them to better my own business and help up and coming mers.

[officialmermaidkelly]

The knowledge obtained within this thread could actually be useful. Considering the many times people make false claim about people without proof, people do have to protect themselves.

Yes, anything from slander, contracts, taxes, LLC vs Corporate vs Sole Proprietorship, etc all is helpful

[.MermaidSophia.]

AinaR's youtube blog "so you want to be a mermaid" goes into a lot of detail about those things and is a good idea for anyone to watch. I think she goes into insurance and copywrighted photos in one of the vlogs too.

Link to the first one --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIXbE29Anpg

[AniaR]

yeah it's a pretty complex thing. I have learned the hard way that because it varies from state to state and province to province, most things should be handled by a lawyer.

I used to do things piece by piece myself or have law students etc do things, but eventually I ran into a lot of obstacles. Though it was expensive, a few years ago Sean and I invested in a lawyer. She wrote all our legal documents (contracts, non-disclosures, non-competes, contractor contracts, swim school waivers etc) and it was the best decision we ever did. She also alerted us to some laws we were unaware of that we needed to tweak our business to make sure we were following. The law doesn't care if you're new and don't know or don't have access to the knowledge. So with tweaked a few things for better clarification.

Joseph Mcgarry was a speaker at Mermania and has a fantastic tax handout for those in the US that covers a lot of basic information as well.