Legal Geek is compiling a ‘hack-book’ of lawyers and legaltechies who code. If you code, or are learning to code, we would love to include you in our ‘hack-book’. Drop us a line via [email protected] [yes it is .co].

Taron Khajotia is the founder of Jus Eq (juseq.com), an early-stage mobile-optimised practise management suite for lawyers. He started learning to code 6 months ago when he couldn’t find the necessary business tools for Jus Eq from cloud-based, plug & play applications.

How has coding helped you as a lawyer?

“I’m not a lawyer, but I am a LegalTech entrepreneur. I set out to build a product delivered via technology, and then realised I knew too little about this core aspect of my business. Coding has helped me to identify and map out the elements of the products and features that I am interested in building.”

How did you start coding?

“In addition to reading and speaking to people in the development space, I started learning javascript and began interacting with the different components of front end and back end. Within a few months, I had learnt the basics of how it all fits together, including:

• Knowledge of languages, frameworks, databases, or libraries, that I could use to build products;
• Knowledge of the pathways and protocols
• An understanding of the different tech stacks, and those which would work well for my product
• Familiarity with the basic concepts and best practices relating to software development, testing and product release
• The ability to scope out the resources & functionality pertaining to key features
• How to communicate effectively with developers, to assess their proposals in terms of time and cost
• The removal of many of my own misconceptions about developing software and the tech business in general
• An appreciation for the gap between developers and management, and how I could close the gap.
• A greater confidence in building, releasing, measuring and improving my product.”

What challenges stood in your way when learning to code?

• Time
• The lack of community and support structure
• It can get really boring at times!
• A failure to pick my battles, and learning the correct technology in the correct order.

What approach have you taken in learning to code?

“For me it was a lot of trial and error. But I think the approach varies depending on one’s objective. I found the following resources extremely useful:

• Books: The Lean Startup (by Eric Ries). This book should be required reading for any entrepreneur!
• Blogs: The Upwork blog has several high level explanations on how the elements of a stack fit together
• Videos: The Web Developer Boot Camp by Colt Steele (Udemy), and Y Combinator’s Startup School series
• Newsletters: Medium

What advice would you give to someone wanting to learn how to code?

“Know what you want to build before you start so that you can sequence an effective learning path and learn and practice languages before starting on frameworks. And always remember, if you don’t understand a concept, stop your task. Research the concept, understand it fully, then resume the task. This will actually end up being a short cut.”

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