On Friday, new UK crowdfunding platform CrowdJustice officially opened its doors to those seeking funds for their latest legal situations.
According to TechCrunch, CrowdJustice was founded by ex-United Nations lawyer, Julia Salasky, and is considered a crowdfunding platform for “public interest” litigation. She explained:
“CrowdJustice allows communities to band together to access the courts to protect their communal assets – like their local hospital – or shared values – like human rights. Successive governments have made access to justice harder and more expensive but we are using the power of the crowd to try and stem the tide.”
Revealing more details about the platform, Salasky shared:
“Under the coalition government, and we can be sure it is a trend that will continue under the new Tory government, we’ve had enormous cuts to legal aid funding and legislation that really undermines people’s ability to challenge government decisions. As a result it’s harder than ever for normal people, let alone vulnerable people, to access the courts, particularly when there’s an issue of importance but not necessarily a big financial payout at the end.”
Also noting what types of cases that might hit CrowdJustice, Salasky predicts they could range from very local to public importance:
“These [cases] can affect hundreds or thousands (or hundreds of thousands!) of people. There’s no existing mechanism for enabling communities to channel the energy and the finances of the community as a whole, and typically public interest cases rely on a few brave individuals to make massive financial sacrifices on behalf of their communities. We are basically hacking the legal system to enable communities to invest in their future.”
In regards to why there hasn’t been a crowdfunding platform in the UK like CrowdJustice, Salasky added:
“It’s funny that is has taken so long for crowdfunding to penetrate the legal world, as everywhere I go to pitch, lawyers are saying, ‘I can’t believe that this doesn’t exist yet.’ or ‘we have been meaning to do this for ages.’ There is despair in the legal community at the way access to justice for ordinary people has been undermined in the UK over the last few years, and basically that all comes down to funding.”
