Thread by @johnpmayer

This is an interesting/vital discussion - can we create apps/websites that help people handle their own legal problems? … corollary...can we create apps/websites that assist lawyers in making legal services less expensive or free?
1/17
@jbrowder1 @marclauritsen @a2jauthor

IMHO, this is a settled question - resoundingly YES. Ok, but the devil is in the details.
2/17

We can all imagine SRLs that use @DoNotPayLaw and other apps and have a bad experience. We can imagine clients who have bad lawyers .. anecdotes are not data. Can we get data?
3/17

Some, but not enough (a different, but related problem BTW). Probably not enough to do good stats … are we stuck?

No.
4/17

As a proxy for data that tells us things are broken (or for things that are too new to measure), we look at Duty of Care - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_c… Lawyers are bound by Professional Rules to do good work by their clients.
5/17

App makers - less so - there is not the tradition and profession with the same weight of culture there. If anything, app makers are inherently less trustworthy as a culture - privacy, phishing, quality control are unwelcome parts of the culture.
6/17

So we have to ask the app makers to “show their work”. 1/Is there a lawyer behind the app? 2/Did someone with legal experience test the app in the real world?
7/17

3/Can we examine the code to make sure it follows the court rules? 4/What rules/regs were consulted? These are easy questions to answer.
8/17

Most of the stuff on legal aid websites would answer …
1/lawyer?/yes, legal
2/experience?/yes,
3/examine code?/yes w/some effort,
4/rules/regs? /often linked on the website as part of the context.

9/17

How would @donotpaylaw answer?
1/lawyer?/no or none named,
2/experience?/not sure,
3/examine code?/no,
4/rules/regs?/no.

Betters answers would be more re-assuring to lawyers and SRLs.
10/17

Is this quibbling or protectionism? A little, but protecting Duty of Care is not a bad thing. It’s what lawyers pay for their monopoly - to be mindful of this care.
11/17

Even books from Nolo or other self-help apps/publishers are usually written by someone with experience in the problem space or lawyers. The guidance is broader and the duty of care responsibility must past the muster of the publisher.
12/17

@DoNotPayLaw does demonstrate how easy it is to automate simple legal processes. Having a lawyer - w/duty of care responsibility - take a look doesn’t seem overly protectionist - seems like quality assurance.
13/17

It is also about shipping product, but it has to be balanced. Finding that balance is why this is an interesting and vital conversation.
14/17

Not all lawyers are good and the system IS hostile to SRLs - balance is out of whack. Lawyers (as a culture) ARE hide-bound/resistant to innovation - notwithstanding the likely readers of these tweets. This has gone on too too long.
15/17

Building better tools is great. It’s where @caliorg/@a2jauthor have been working for almost 20 years w/some success/not enough. Scaling is hard. We are working on that.
16/17

Minding the balance of duty of care and taking risks to ship product and iterate HAS made innovation harder - no question - every innovator has to answer that question for themselves.

17/17/end

@jbrowder1 @marclauritsen @A2JAuthor unroll @threadreaderapp