Online legal service platforms and the path to access to justice.

• Author: Glover, Gordon J.
• Position: Special Issue: Technology & the Practice of Law

As Bob Dylan so eloquently says, "The times they are a-changin'."

When I was born in 1979, there were approximately 26,000 lawyers in Florida. When most lawyers graduated law school in 1979, they had a job, relatively little debt, and a mentor to show them the ropes. Lawyers in 1979 communicated by using a landline or writing a letter, and a lawyer's competition was the law firm down the street.

By stark contrast, today there are over 100,000 lawyers in Florida (26,000 of which are young lawyers). Most new law school graduates have between $100,000 and $200,000 in student loan debt, and nearly 16 percent of law school graduates are unable to find any employment. A lawyer's life today revolves around the iPad and the iPhone, and lawyers communicate and socialize by using Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Lawyers are not only competing with other law firms, but with online legal service providers and the plethora of free legal advice/forms available on the Internet.

Yet, despite these drastic changes, the most pressing issue facing the legal profession is the lack of access to justice. The World Justice Project ranks the U.S. 65th out of 99 countries in accessibility and affordability of civil justice. It is estimated that 80 percent of low-and moderate-income individuals are without the representation they need. Moderate-income families are not the working poor. They are a family of four making $94,000. Individuals considered middle-income go without the representation they need 50 percent of the time and most others do not realize that they have a legal problem and seek assistance by a nonlawyer or do nothing at all. At the same time, lawyers are chasing after the same top 20 percent of potential clients who can pay their high hourly rates; or who have a personal injury case; or who are pursuing a claim for which the attorneys' fees can be paid under a fee-shifting statute or otherwise recovered from the defendant.

So, what do we do? How do we connect lawyers with the underserved? In recent years, most states have developed commissions or committees to examine ways to close the justice gap. Last year, Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Jorge Labarga began The Florida Commission on Access to Civil Justice to study the unmet civil legal needs of disadvantaged, low-income, and moderate-income Floridians. I believe the answer lies with embracing technology and working with (not against) the growing number of technology-based companies that are...