Lawble: Helping Make Pro-Bono Legal Assistance Available to All

PROVO, Utah – Aug 01, 2019 – After he moved from Hawaii to Utah, George Simons needed a car. As a first-year JD/MBA student at BYU, he wanted reliable transportation to navigate Utah Valley. Simons purchased a car that cost about $10,000 and, within three days, discovered that he had purchased a faulty car that would no longer run. He knew he needed legal help, but Simons had no idea where to start. Then a first-year law student, Simons thought he could receive guidance from professors or peers at the BYU J. Reuben Clark Law School. However, since professors are legally unable to give legal advice, Simons faced multiple dead ends. 

“I wondered who else out there couldn’t get legal help when they needed it,” Simons says. This question sparked the inception of Lawble, a socially innovativeorganization that helps connect individuals in need with free legal help. 

Access to Justice in the United States

During his second year of law school, Simons completed research about the concept of access to justice, analyzing how easily people in the nation were able to receive needed legal help. According to the 2017 Justice Gap Report, 86 percent of civil legal problems reported by low-income Americans received little to no help. The World Justice Report showed that only 74 percent of people knew where to find legal advice.

Criminal lawsuit plaintiffs are provided with public civil attorneys, but citizensdealing with civil lawsuits aren’t provided with legal help from the court systems. Citizens in need often don’t receive the help they need. Simons noticed this gap and decided to start an organization to solve this problem. Lawble was officially born in May 2018.

“I wanted to disrupt the archaic and suppressive legal system that we live in,” Simons says. “Our system is suppressive in that we don’t have access to justice. Humans don’t seem to have attorneys, but corporations have attorneys.”

According to Simons, large corporations often have their legal needs met while individuals do not. Simons also believes that the legal services market has become overregulated and stymied by professional conduct regulations.

After realizing this, Simons did further research to understand what options are available to people who are in need of free legal advice. He discovered free legal clinics and conducted a deep dive to better understand the client experience.

Free Legal Clinics: The Client Experience

Free legal clinics offer resources to people in need but who are unable to receive legal help elsewhere. While many people benefit from these services, Simons identified a few common pain points for clients.

Simons found that people often don’t know how to find a free legal clinic near them or how to choose a clinic that offers the legal resources they need. Most clinics generally open only once a week, and people may have to travel fairly long distances to reach a clinic. Once there, clients wait in line, fill out paperwork by hand, and wait again for anywhere from five to forty-five minutes. Clients can then sit down with a lawyer for up to an hour to receive free legal advice. 

Sometimes people don’t receive the help they are seeking at the free legal clinics because that particular clinic doesn’t have a lawyer qualified to address their particular needs.

How Lawble Empowers Individuals in Legal Need

Simons decided to focus on the above-mentioned challenges and, as a result, created Lawble, an online platform that allows people to find legal clinics nearby with the resources to address their needs. The name Lawble is a combination of the words lawand able;  the idea behind the name is to make legal help more accessible to individuals in need, Simons explained. Simons partnered with a friend in his law class to create the organization.

In the beginning, Simons pitched his idea to the Social Venture Academy at the Ballard Center. After receiving feedback from the judges, he rerouted his idea, eventually receiving funding from the Ballard Center. Looking back, Simons thanks Ballard Center advisor Aaron Miller and the other SVA judges for helping him form Lawble into what it is today.

A main focus for Lawble is creating a user-friendly website with language settings for both Spanish and English. Clients can visit the website, choose their language option, and explain why they need a lawyer. 

In the future, Simons wants to see Lawble grow through partnerships and speaking events. He also hopes to partner with the largest pro-bono clinics in every state. His vision is to make free legal clinics easily accessible to those who need them. 

“Our end goal is to create a single landing page for all of the nation’s free legal services so we can provide justice for all,” says Simons. “We want people to get online and get to the right clinic. They don’t have to understand their case or what type of lawyer they need.”