alt.legal: If Money is Speech, Then Crowdfund Your Favorite Public Interest Lawsuit
A new venture offers citizens, lawyers and non-lawyers alike, a way to participate in important courtroom battles.
Julia Salasky of CrowdJustice
You, politically involved? Well, hopefully you voted, although that’s going out of style. Maybe you’ve written a letter to your Congressman, or at least filled out a form on change.org. Good for you. You’ve faithfully upvoted topics on reddit that matter to you. You listen diligently to podcasts that are advancing the conversation. Maybe you even marched on something. Well done.
For us, the lawyers of the world, we can suit up for battles in court. Maybe we take on a pro bono matter and make a difference. But what if you are a non-lawyer? How can you participate in the policies being fought for in our courtrooms?
Enter CrowdJustice, an alt.legal crowdfunding venture that provides a way for individual people to fund specific cases they care about. CrowdJustice’s founder and CEO and overall prodigy, Julia Salasky, is a UVA, Oxford, BPP Law and London School of Economics grad. She is also a Biglaw alumna from UK powerhouse Linklaters and has served as a lawyer with the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL).
So naturally, her interview genuinely inspired me. For anyone who feels that alt.legal is not standing up for the marginalized or giving a voice to important causes, please take a look at CrowdJustice.
Edward Sohn: Julia, tell me a little about yourself and your background.
Julia Salasky: I grew up in Virginia but I am half-British, and I have spent the last 15 years in UK and Europe. After law school in the UK, I worked at a global law firm as a commercial litigator, and I have always had a huge passion for justice work. I also worked with a pro bono legal aid clinic and then later for the UN, across different governments, across jurisdictions.
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At some point, I began to deal with the question: how can technology help people get access to the legal system? I had come across a few promising technology solutions, like online dispute resolution, but there was still a huge gap. The British government had spent billions of pounds annually on legal aid, yet too many people still did not have access to the justice system.
Right around the same time as these questions came up for me, a friend was starting a litigation fund and asked me to join. That’s when it came together, when my investigation into technology merged with concepts of litigation funding. I realized there could be an easier way for people without legal backgrounds to get access to legal system.
And that’s the origin of CrowdJustice—providing a solution to the question “how can people access the law that is friendly, gives funding, and supports their communities?”
ES: So CrowdJustice works to connect individual people and crowdfund specific cases, right?
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JS: That’s right. We vet litigation that lawyers, non-profits or plaintiffs submit via the platform, to ensure that it’s a real case and there’s a regulated lawyer or non-profit involved. Then we make cases available on the platform for crowdfunding. Any person can contribute funds to a case, and if the “all or nothing” target is met within the target timeframe, the funds are withdrawn and go directly towards the certified lawyer representing the client on that case. No one’s card gets charged until they hit the target.
Targets are usually set at the minimum amount needed to reach the next stage. It may be $3,000 for filing fees, but with $10,000 (a stretch target), they may be able to hire an expert witness and increase their chances of winning.
ES: This is quite an alt.legal space, incorporating technology and even concepts of litigation finance to create new ways to connect people to investing into matters.
JS: Yes, that’s true. I came from more of a legal background and not an access background, and I understand there’s a litigation funding angle on this.
But it’s actually broader than that. Crowdfunding results in communities engaging with legal issues in a powerful way and create change that they can care about. It enables people to engage with the law through technology. People get on CrowdJustice to find out about cases in their own neighborhood, to learn how others are accessing the law, and to get behind a case that they care about.
ES: How did you start CrowdJustice? What were some of the early barriers or obstacles you faced?
JS: Honestly, the biggest barrier to getting started was thinking that someone else must have done it before! At the beginning, back in May 2015, it was just me and a laptop. I had a friend put together a very basic version of a site that could work, and we got up and running.
Right away, I knew compliance was going to be critical with anything legal. So I learned how to comply with anti-money laundering requirements and other regulations, and we created a process that has a high level of trust and compliance. Money raised always goes directly into the certified, trusted account.
Then after a few months, we got started with a law firm that was looking for something like CrowdJustice. They told me that they had a case that would be on the front page of the Guardian in two weeks.
I said, “Sure!” We got that matter off the ground, and after that, people found out about us and even sought us out. It turns out that a lot of people needed this trustworthy place where they could raise funds and awareness for their case.
ES: What about the risk of fraud? How do you confirm that the amount needed is appropriate to the cause?
JS: We don’t. We leave that between clients and their certified attorneys. It’s important that we don’t interfere in attorney-client relationships. We leave it between the client and attorney to set a funding target that is meaningful for the case.
ES: Have you learned a lot of lessons from crowdfunding platforms?
JS: Yes. The way of the future for philanthropic giving is microdonations, smaller amounts, and connecting with people online.
But again, with us, it’s way bigger than that. This is about effecting concrete change. The battlefield in the fight for change is in the courtroom, and crowdfunding enables real people to get behind real cases with real lawyers. There’s more transparency in the outcomes and results of that giving.
Most normal people are not able to personally be a part of a Supreme Court case on a given day. CrowdJustice enables people to engage directly with legal change in the community and be a check on executive power.
ES: What happens when litigants lose?
JS: It’s a donation-based platform, so people aren’t investing for a return. The emotional reaction isn’t focused on winning, the motive is philanthropic or advocacy.
But it’s a good question, one that we didn’t know the answer to when we started. In one case, for example, the plaintiffs won in the high court and lost in the court of appeals, which in the UK meant they had to pay the other side’s fees. They emailed all their supporters and said, “we know this is a bummer, but we lost” — and in a matter of days, they somehow raised $40,000 more to pay their fee.
Supporters aren’t just supporting the outcome, they wanted to support the people.
ES: A quick browse of the site reveals that there’s a lot of political cases. The media have covered some of these, notably, anti-Brexit, anti-Trump campaigns have gotten a lot of attention from the media. Is this primarily the thrust of the site’s activity?
JS: No, we are a neutral platform and we have cases from across the political spectrum. Some legal cases can be very political, and political cases draw huge support and huge ire, which is totally fascinating. The platform has, at times, received heated feedback, even attempts to flood the system (a Denial of Service attack) when the site had a case that questioned the constitutionality of the Brexit referendum. That case ended up winning in the Supreme Court.
But CrowdJustice really does not take a stand, and there’s nothing forcing people to support a case. It excites us to provide a new way for people to engage with the law. The courts are, for better or worse, an important part of the political system of any country. And really, supporting cases is a powerful way to de-politicize an issue, because it frames issues in front of a neutral arbiter.
Finally, the law is a powerful way to push issue-based advocacy. Rather than looking at it from a red or blue binary, you’d find, for example, some traditional conservatives funding pro-abortion cases. People’s opinions don’t perfectly align with political parties; funding litigation on specific issues can reflect more nuanced politics.
ES: Where is the future of this?
JS: In 15 or 20 years, there’s no way that people are not going to be connecting to the legal system online. One of the scary aspects of technology is that there’s a generalized fear that it will usurp jobs. But we are connecting people to the law that showcases lawyers achieving important things.
The future of law is something that will be accessible online, and accessible in the broader sense—to make it more understandable. We’re trying to be that place for people.
ES: I’m looking forward to that future. Best of luck to you!
Ed Sohn is VP, Product Management and Partnerships, for Thomson Reuters Legal Managed Services. After more than five years as a Biglaw litigation associate, Ed spent two years in New Delhi, India, overseeing and innovating legal process outsourcing services in litigation. Ed now focuses on delivering new e-discovery solutions with technology managed services. You can contact Ed about ediscovery, legal managed services, expat living in India, theology, chess, ST:TNG, or the Chicago Bulls at [email protected] or via Twitter (@edsohn80). (The views expressed in his columns are his own and do not reflect those of his employer, Thomson Reuters.)
