We appreciate the invitation from President Ronald Flagg and the LSC Board of Directors to provide input into the FY2023 LSC funding request to Congress.

As one of few justice technology companies focused on increasing legal aid capacity by boosting private pro bono lawyer engagement, we believe it is imperative that LSC receive sufficient appropriation from Congress to adequately address low income Americans’ civil legal needs and strongly support LSC’s request for an appropriation of over $1B for FY2023.

As a Latina founder of a social impact company, raising VC money hasn’t exactly been easy. Especially in Chicago, where I’m based, the VC community, while close-knit and easily accessible, is small, homogenous, and focused on later stage investments. On the startup side, of the 65 Chicago-based startups backed by Chicago-based venture capital funds, only 16 (about 25%) have a non-white founder, and only 15 (or 23%), have a female founder, according to Chicago Blend. From firsthand experience, the lack of access to early stage capital as compared to the coasts has an oversized impact on underrepresented founders’ ability to get their startups off the ground in Chicago, skewing survivorship bias and greatly affecting what ‘success’ looks like. Thus, the cycle perpetuates.

Enter LongJump — a first-check venture fund designed to elevate Chicago’s startup landscape by investing in underrepresented ideas and founders.

It’s been two and a half years since I published the first data-driven study that analyzed the (lack of) diversity among legaltech founders. I had intended for this update to be as solely data-focused as my last report, but since our collective conversation around diversity as both a country and an industry has greatly shifted since early 2018, this update warrants context about where we are, why all of this matters, and what we can do to make real change.

Among the topics we touched on:

• Data from Paladin on how COVID-19 and new racial justice initiatives are affecting pro bono (which Sonday wrote about here).

• An update on my 2018 research on diversity among founders of legal tech companies.

• Paladin’s partnerships with the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, and the Oklahoma Access to Justice Foundation to create pro bono portals.

As the first guest on Access to Justice Week on the podcast, I discuss:

• My career journey from Princeton grad to the DOJ, international criminal affairs in Mexico and Central America, and founding Paladin

• The pro bono opportunities that COVID-19 has created

• The pro bono initiative with which Paladin and Clio are assisting the New York State Bar

• What lawyers can do to contribute to pro bono efforts