Over the past few years, we’ve seen a steady rise in B2C solutions being used to solve legal challenges from complicated divorces to immigration filings to bankruptcy to pesky parking tickets. The benefits are tangible. First, moving legal processes online provides access to more people by meeting them where they are. Second, by automating basic workflows, tech solutions can decrease costs for low-income individuals and increase scalability, ultimately serving more folks in need. Lastly, when done correctly, B2C tools can mitigate risks for clients who might navigate the system alone (or not at all) and end up worse off than before.

HomeKristen SondayMarch 30, 2020Comment

Taking a Business Approach to Access to Justice

Currently, nonprofits, legal aid organizations, and funders like the Legal Services Corporation are the backbone of the access to justice ecosystem; their work is absolutely vital to helping those in need. Given how under-resourced and over-stretched these organizations are though, there’s limited room for them to develop their own tech or pursue innovation. If we’re serious about creating sustainable, modern, and network-effect driven technology, the legal industry must help ATJ entrepreneurs tackle barriers to entry and growth.

Home, LatestKristen SondayFebruary 20, 2019Comment

How to Reduce Design Bias and Increase Access to Justice

We are at an access-to-justice tipping point in the United States. The justice gap continues to grow, particularly for women, immigrants, and minorities, and it now affects a staggering 86% of low-income individuals in need. Yet, we are also now building and consuming far more legal technology than ever before.

The dichotomy comes down to two things: people and processes. In order to build well-informed solutions and get them in the hands of the right users, it’s essential that founders — the creators of those solutions — be intimately familiar with, or come from, the communities they’re trying to serve. Unfortunately, the demographics that the justice gap most affects are also those least reflected in legal tech entrepreneurship: women make up only 14% of founders, and Black and Latinx entrepreneurs only 5%.

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