This platform mimics the behavior of lawyers so you can hire a fractional lawyer

Every year, millions of civilians, i.e. non-lawyers, represent themselves in civil courts because they are not poor enough to deserve free legal aid and not wealthy enough to pay attorney fees. Of course, the other party usually has legal representation. And that puts civilians who struggle to navigate the system at a serious disadvantage. "That means middle-class people end up being left out of the process," says Sonja Ebron.

That's why, in 2019, she and her co-founder and wife Debra Slone launched Courtroom5. Its platform offers a five-step process that allows users to hire lawyers who can help them with limited parts of their case, creating a more affordable system.

Reduce the risk for lawyers

About 30 million people who aren't lawyers handle civil cases every year, from foreclosure to debt collection, according to Ebron. Most are relatively simple small claims situations. But about 7 million of them are what Ebron calls "protracted" litigation - "Not just Judge Judy cases," she says - that require a healthy dose of legal expertise.

Ebron, an electrical engineering doctor with a background in artificial intelligence, and Slone, a Ph.D. librarian and expert in qualitative data analysis, have had a fair share of their own failed attempts to represent themselves. They would talk about their losses from time to time, and eventually they identified a particularly tricky problem. In most situations, ordinary people could handle much of the process themselves, hiring a lawyer for limited parts of their cases. But any attorney they hire would have to figure it all out or risk malpractice. And that meant expensive, billable hours of work.

They figured, however, that there were plenty of small businesses and sole proprietorships looking for customers who would like to be able to take on such cases on a limited basis. Plus, says Ebron, lawyers frequently hire their compatriots for split work, so it's a scenario they understand.

The answer, they decided, was to develop a system that, according to Ebron, would "reduce the risk and time for lawyers, thereby making it possible to serve people who otherwise could not afford a lawyer."< /p> Imitate the behavior of lawyers

In 2017, they bought the domain and created a Wordpress site where they started posting basic information such as what to do when someone first serves you and the structure of a legal document, as well as a place where people can store their deposits. They have also created an online community. Then in 2019, they formed a company.

They also listened to customer feedback. "Like any startup, you want to bring everything you can to market and let people tell you what your product should look like," says Ebron. So, they observed how users navigated the platform and then made changes to create an easier-to-use process. For example, when they observed that people were struggling to find sources for appeal decisions, they added access to case law information providers.

A scale of justice on a simple blue background. The scale is partially silhouetted as a strong backlight obscures some of the finer details. The scale is placed on the left side of the image, leaving enough negative space for copying. The image can be flipped horizontally to meet other compositional needs.

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They finally developed a platform, introduced just two months ago, helping people mimic the behavior of a lawyer, taking the same actions as a lawyer. Then, a real lawyer listed on the platform can intervene and immediately understand the context of the case. (There is a subscription fee of $75 per month).

Five steps

To this end, there is a five-step process that helps users understand what action to take at any point in the process. It also offers legal training to help people understand these options; analyze the legal elements of their case, so that they can present the most appropriate legal argument; identify the legal authorities and precedents that show the judge that the arguments are valid; and prepare a legal document that assa...