News Story (NATIONAL)
Caroline Haskins
Motherboard
October 10, 2018
READ THE FULL STORY HERE
Tags: Consumer Protection, Technology
Organizations mentioned/involved: Legal Services Corporation (LSC)
DETAILS
Being able to sue anyone with a few clicks on an app may sound dystopian, and people may understandably be concerned that a service like this will make an litigious society even worse. But the truth is that, at the moment, the legal system helps entrench already existing power structures, and that low-income people are vastly underserved by the legal system, and have little access to it.
The service may help close the huge gap between people who can afford legal services and those who can’t; in 2017, nearly three-in-four low-income households had a civil legal dispute, and the overwhelming majority of them—86 percent—had no lawyer or legal help to help them through the process, according to the Legal Services Corporation, a nonprofit that studies access to legal services in the US.