By Pablo Yannone Sancho, Journalist at GLTH
Many startups that want to create solutions focused on access to justice “are closest to the problem, but farthest from the resources.” This claim belongs to Maya Markovich, one of our Access to Justice Legal Advisors and founder at Justice Technology Association, inter alia projects.
She has a background in behavioral science and organizational psychology. Her first role was in change management consulting for a tech company where she was working on long-range tech implementation plans, focusing on creating behavior and mindset changes around adopting new patterns. Then she decided to go to law school, and early in practice was often “pushed towards technology as one of the newer career attorneys.”
Over time, she realized that the legal industry needed to embrace technology, despite the challenges of implementing such changes. She decided to stop practicing law and moved to the legal tech provider side, working in product management and requirements analysis, “serving as the voice of the end user for legal tech companies.” Later, she joined NextLaw Labs in 2015, where she helped accelerate legal tech companies both internally at Dentons and externally in the market.
Currently, Maya is an independent consultant for legal tech startups, legal departments, and law firms, helping them leverage technological opportunities, especially with AI. She uses all these skills at the Justice Technology Association, where she is executive director.
Building technology to bridge the access to justice gap: justice tech
“We help provide mission-driven startups with upstream support, resources, network, and building the ecosystem around justice tech itself,” claims Maya. “I think that's why, although I followed GLTH for many years and I am a big fan of your work in general, I was really happy to see the new focus on access to justice and to be able to provide my insight in that way.”
Justice Technology Association launched two years ago. Now, they have nearly 50 members, an extensive advisory board and a number of strategic partners “of like-minded and impact-focused organizations,” all of whom are willing to help the member startups that need their advice. They also facilitate investor introductions and co-produce a justice tech startup accelerator.
Well, the first cohort was supported by partners including Dream.org, Village Capital and Gener8tor, organizations focused on fostering innovation, social impact, and economic empowerment. “It is useful for startups not only to understand the landscape in which they're in as it's changing so fast all the time, but also topoint potential investors to.”
“We do everything we can to help them grow, so they can help more people.” Thanks to these projects, access to justice keeps improving more and more every day, but there is still a problem: what is currently, in Maya’s opinion, the state of Access to Justice and what can we do to help them improve it?
Five billion people around the world can't access their rights
“It's not going well,” begins Maya. “In the U.S., for instance, 92% of people in civil justice matters are not able to get enough or any of the legal help that they need. Over 5 billion people worldwide lack access to justice.
It is a dire situation across the globe, and Maya is happy to be part of the Advisory Board, as she wants to know “more concrete examples of not only the scale of the problem, but also the bright lights of opportunity and positive impact that are taking place.” “We have partnerships with folks in Australia and APAC and other parts of the Americas and the UK, but Europe is definitely one of the places where we would like to know more about tech-focused access to justice efforts,” she claims.
In order to work out this lack of awareness, Justice Technology Association is helping Village Capital to expand Village Capital JusticeTech Ecosystem Map, an interactive resource that includes not only justice tech companies, but also accelerators, investors, and related entities. Now Europe is a big blank spot on the map. “I want people to reach out to it because I think it's incredibly valuable for all of us to have a central repository of justice tech resources,” says Maya. Join them now!
Are justice technologies progressing faster than legal technologies?
When it comes to talk about justice tech, aimed at addressing the access to justice gap and helping those that cannot afford a law firm, we are talking about a completely different market: “The technology is direct to consumer,” says Maya.
It requires different “product design and different go-to-market strategies.” “When you have somebody who's faced with a legal issue for the very first time, they need help walking through step by step, making sure that their form is filled out completely.”
From Maya’s point of view, justice tech is progressing even faster than legaltech. Despite some incredible data that she shared: “When we started NextLaw Labs, there were 60 self-described legal tech companies in 2015. And five years later, there were 4,000,” says Maya. “Legal professionals now have more incentive to experiment with and use technology in their day-to-day activities.”
Beyond Access to Justice, who else is Maya?
When asked about her favorite place in the world, Maya finds it hard to choose. After all, she’s lived in places as diverse as California and Helsinki. While California has Oakland, her hometown, Finland has ubiquitous saunas, which was the way she adapted to the cold weather while living there. She also loves the Peloponnese in Greece, a region she’s fascinated by for its history, olive trees, and people.
As you can see, she has a mix of tastes, a pattern that we also find in her favorite TV shows: Peaky Blinders for its intensity and Ted Lasso for its optimism. Although she’s only watched Peaky Blinders once, she’s sure she could rewatch it endlessly, something that would make up for the fact that last time she spent half the time with her eyes covered because of the violence.
If she could travel through time, she would choose the past. Indeed, she fantasizes about being in the room during the United States Constitutional Convention, where the Constitution was drafted. For her, it’s fascinating to think of the Constitution as a document designed to be flexible and adaptable over time. “They knew things would change in the future in ways they couldn't possibly fathom,” she claims. Of course, she also would like to be in Paris in the 1920s. “Lots of art, science, and music!”
As for advice to her younger self, she would say to take every opportunity that comes her way. She reflects that, although she has been brave in many instances, there are always more opportunities she wishes she had seized. She would tell her younger self not to underestimate her abilities and to see every experience as a learning opportunity. As Nelson Mandela said: “Everything is always impossible until it's done.” And Maya shows it every day as the founder of Justice Technology Association. Don’t forget to check out the map that Village Capital is building!
Founder and Director, Justice Technology Association (JTA)
ความคิดเห็น