By Joe Doherty

f you were one of the more than 3,800 attendees at the Self Storage Association Fall Conference & Trade Show in Las Vegas, I hope you stayed until the end to hear from the all-star panel of industry attorneys. Regardless of whether you were there, I want to share three takeaways that stood out to me.

First, our industry’s leaders have always been forward-looking. As I mentioned in last month’s column in SSA Magazine, some of the attorneys in the industry’s early days debated whether self-storage was a bailment relationship or landlord-tenant relationship. In short, bailment involves much more liability exposure to the business and would have greatly hampered the industry’s growth.

Contrary to the attorneys, however, panelist Carlos Kaslow explained that owners were always clear that they were landlords and pushed the industry in that direction. This position was solidified when the earliest self-storage laws, which the industry’s pioneers pushed through grassroots lobbying, defined self-service storage facility.

Second, gone are the days when the industry’s only legal concern was compliance with the lien process. Of course, this has been true for a while, but all the attorneys on the panel agreed that legal compliance concerns are accelerating at an unprecedented pace. Whether the concern relates to data breaches, so-called junk fees or other pricing restrictions, debt collection laws, privacy, etc., industry operators need to know more than ever about the legal trends affecting the broader business community and, by extension, self-storage operators.

Third, the panelists discussed how certain technological innovations are making it easier for tenants to behave poorly. The issue could be tenants storing lithium-ion batteries that pose a fire risk for the whole facility. Or it could be tenants reading Reddit forums to learn how to game the system (e.g., using a family member’s credit card to get out of lien status, then the family member makes a chargeback request). Finally, it could be tenants using AI to write (often meritless) lawsuits—cough, cough—better than many attorneys.

Whatever form they take, troublesome tenants are as certain as death and taxes, and they are finding creative new ways to nettle operators. The panelists had great advice for dealing with these specific circumstances, but CubeSmart Chief Legal Officer and Secretary Jeff Foster said it best when he urged attendees not to allow tenants’ problems to fester and to seek swift resolutions to tenant complaints or problems.

In my experience, it’s a mathematical certainty that these types of tenants are behind most of the negative legislation that the industry battles. A commitment from all operators to swiftly resolve tenant complaints whenever possible, even or especially when the tenant is wrong, benefits the whole industry.

If you weren’t in Las Vegas this year to hear about the latest legal trends, be sure to come to next year’s SSA conferences in San Antonio and/or Las Vegas or to the state/regional show where you operate.