December 07, 2020

by

0   Comments

Last September, I was riding my bike down 14th street in Washington, D.C., my preferred mode of transportation to law school, carefully observing the rules about staying strictly within the bike lane. At Thomas Circle, I stopped for a red light. Next to me a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) bus lumbered to a stop. I rang my bell to make sure the bus driver knew I was on his left. The light changed. As we both moved into Thomas Circle, the driver cut the wheel to the left and veered into the bike lane. At that point, I was trapped between the curb and the bus.

I still remember those seconds. The metal encroaching in as I braced myself for an impact where I would be at the losing end. I was knocked to the ground; the bus did not stop. I was lying on the cement and saw the wheel keep turning. I had no time to get out of the way; I winced as 30,000 pounds of metal rolled over my elbow. My arm went numb and couldn’t tell if it was broken. As I was lying on the ground writhing in pain, little did I know that this event would be the catalyst to launch my founder’s journey.

Shocked and confused, I awoke in a hospital bed. My mind was racing, “Was my arm broken?”; “Would I be able to type my class notes?”; “How will I be able to write my exams?”; “Would I be forced to drop out for a this semester?”; and “How much was the hospital going to cost?” I knew emergency room treatment was expensive. My insurance, which was basic, undoubtedly would not cover much. I did not need to be a law student to know I could sue the bus company because my injuries and resultant medical bills were its fault. But lawsuits take time. In the interim, I would face months of cash flow issues.

Miraculously, I was diagnosed with only severe bone bruises, told how to take care of my injuries, and sent home after maxing out my credit card by paying $4,000 for my ambulance ride and hospital treatment.

A week later, I surveyed the police report, which included eye witness statements about the bus crossing into the bike lane and hitting me and the call for an ambulance, the medical bills from the emergency room visit, and the notes I made immediately after the accident. After a discussion with my insurance company, which gave me a headache and promised many more if I pursued a claim, I decided to go directly against the bus company for reimbursement of my expenses. My case was clear-cut: my injuries had been proximately caused by the bus driver’s per-se negligence in crossing into the restricted bike lane. The police report substantiated this, and the medical bills proved the direct cost of treatment. In fact, my case was so straightforward that it never would have made it into a law school exam.

Hiring a personal injury lawyer on their normal contingency fee basis of 30% was out of the question. Since my actual “hard” damages were only $4,000, I could not afford to pay 30% of that, or $1,200, to a lawyer. For me to come out economically whole, a lawyer on contingency would have to be successful in getting more than my actual hard damages. Also, since my case was so small, I was told it would not necessarily be easy to find a lawyer willing to take the case.

Justice should not be so hard to achieve!

I had to dedicate over 15 hours to draft a convincing demand letter with a precise statement of facts tied to the police report, citations to relevant case law and complete attachments. Technical legal drafting to prove a case, even one as clear as mine, was time-consuming and tedious. There had to be a better way for consumers to make litigation claims. Lawyers should be able to take on smaller cases for consumers that give consumers cost-effective access to justice but still provides enough of a financial incentive to the lawyers to take on these cases. I knew technology had to be the key.

My job before law school had involved the extensive use of technology. From my first day as a 1L, I knew I wanted to work with technology and the law. As a self-taught programmer, I was eager to apply the magic of computing to an industry that desperately needs it. After my first year of law school, I worked in a legal tech company that leverages technology in certain types of contract drafting, negotiating and record-keeping.

Technology Should Be Able to Solve this Problem!

I saw the transformative power of technology on the law in action. After literally being thrown under the bus, I started to hone in on different types of consumer litigation where we could utilizing the efficiency of software to achieve access to justice. Our company is founded on the purpose that consumers should be able to hire lawyers on a cost-efficient basis while lawyers retain an incentive to take on the cases. As an entrepreneur, I knew the company I wanted to build needed to be flexible, find the right litigation opportunity, build out the technology to prove the concept worked and still be able to keep the lights on.

It took a few months to find the right consumer litigation problem to apply our solution. My co-founder and I knew we were on to something when we met our soon to be client, who explained that he had a thriving practice tied to claims under his state’s Lemon Laws. Under those laws, a successful claimant will be awarded attorney’s fee, but awards can be made only after submission of a motion setting forth detailed facts regarding the claim, the claimant, the defendant and the product failure with a vehicle that led to liability under the Lemon Laws. Our client’s attorneys and paralegals were easily spending five and a half hours to draft the fee motions, most of which involved digging through templates and transcribing the vehicle’s history. They could easily grow their business: there was demand for their services, but this would require hiring more staff to draft the motions. Staff represented an immediate high fixed cost, but the business growth needed to support this cost would take time. In the interim, the client could not afford to absorb the loss. It was a classic Catch 22. – If the client did not hire more staff, they could not meet consumer client demand and grow their business. If the client did hire staff to meet additional consumer client demand, they would have to operate at a loss. My eyes lit up. This was a problem begging for a tech solution.

Selling New Technology is Hard

At first, the Client was skeptical. He did not believe me and my co-founder when we said we understood their problem, and could solve it, cutting their drafting time for these motions by over 80%. Based on my experience with legal tech and contracts, if we could turn documents (static text) into data, then we could use that data could to populate their motion templates.  The drafting process would thereby become automated. An attorney would still review the motion before submission, but It would cut drafting time by over 80%. My co-founder, with broad and deep programming experience, knew that what was proposed could be executed relatively quickly with proper projection management that included necessary inputs from the client.

Before hiring us, I am sure that the client ran the same financial scenarios I did and determined that the investment in our tech solution would be a worthwhile investment even if their motion drafting time were cut only by 30%. But there is nothing like the satisfaction that comes from seeing the client’s growing realization that the promise of an 80% reduction in drafting time will be achieved. The firm has now taken a much larger case load, and is set to increase profitability this year by 55%.

I think back to last fall and the journey that started as a lay on the ground watching as the wheel of bus struck me. Access to justice should not be so hard for consumers to access and for lawyers to deliver. While 99% of everything we have done since was accomplished through pure perspiration, that WMATA bus was my 1% inspiration. In terms of our roadmap we are working with Lemon Lawyers who share our mission for justice and efficiency.