Guidance needed for forming partnership (or JV)

[Gary Parilis]

I'm looking for some guidance on partnership or JV. I've been communicating a lot with a potential partner, and we're very compatible (dispositionally and in our objectives), and we've built up a good deal of mutual trust over a couple of months, discussing deals in detail, etc. We're very confident we'll work well together, and that's a big deal. I have capital and he has intimate knowledge of specific neighborhoods in his local market, and can find deals, manage rehab, and the manage the rentals. We know what we want our commercial arrangement to be (pretty simple). Now the next step is to formalize it. Any advice on this? Should we form an LLC? Or just JV on individual deals? We plan to do a BRRRRs, which makes this more of a "marriage" than the "dating" we'd be doing if just flipping. Do we each need legal representation to negotiate/document an agreement? Or is there some boilerplate contract for this kind of arrangement we could use? We'll be doing business outside of my state. Would I need an attorney in the state in which we'd be doing business? I assume it would make sense to form an LLC there (if anywhere).