Legal.io is a technology company for legal organizations and legal networks to match clients to lawyers, legal knowledge, and services. Their aim is to offer legal professionals a better way to practice, innovate, and scale the provision of affordable legal services. LawGives was launched in 2012, in conjunction with

Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, wi ...

, as an online Q and A forum for legal questions. Since 2015, the technology platform powering LawGives has been offered as legal infrastructure for legal referral networks nationwide, including bar associations and networks organized as legal incubators, under the company name "Legal.io."

History

Legal.io (formerly LawGives) was founded in

Stanford, California Stanford is a census-designated place (CDP) in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is the home of Stanford University. The population was 21,150 at the United States Census, 2020, 2020 census. Stanford is ...

in 2011 by

Stanford Law School Stanford Law School (Stanford Law or SLS) is the law school of Stanford University, a private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, it is regarded as one of the most prestigious law schools in the world. Stanford La ...

LLM candidates Tony Lai and Pieter Gunst, former lawyers for

Herbert Smith Herbert Smith LLP was a multinational law firm headquartered in London, United Kingdom. The firm was founded in the City of London in 1882 by Norman Herbert Smith and merged with the Australian law firm Freehills on 1 October 2012, forming Herber ...

and

DLA Piper DLA Piper is a multinational law firm with offices in over 40 countries throughout the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In 2021, it had a total revenue of US$3.47 billion, an average profit per equity partner of ...

respectively. The two had the idea while working on an LLM project during their time at Stanford Law School. Legal.io / LawGives has been touted as one of the best emerging companies in the legal technology space. In 2015, co-founder Pieter Gunst was named as one of

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

30 under 30 in Law & Policy, and they were recognized as the Best New California Legal Service of 2015 by The Recorder.

Current Customers

Legal.io currently works with the following customers: * The New York State Bar Association * Twitch - California Lawyers for the Arts * The Iowa State Bar Association * The Nebraska State Bar Association * The LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York

Access to Justice

The company's focus on the access to justice mission falls in line with similar concerns from other organizations. In 2014, the

Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law The Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law is the law school of Yeshiva University. Located in New York City and founded in 1976, the school is named for Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo. Cardozo graduated its first class in 1979. An LL.M. p ...

published a study exposing that some states have fewer than 1 civil legal aid lawyer per 10,000 residents who rank as poor under federal standards, nearly one quarter of states have no rule to allow court clerks to help people without legal help, and nearly half of state judicial web sites have no information in languages other than English. Lisa Kaufman, of the

Columbia Law School Columbia Law School (Columbia Law or CLS) is the law school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university in New York City. Columbia Law is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious law schools in the world and has always ranked i ...

's Human Rights Clinic has stated:

"In the United States, millions of people are forced to go it alone when they're facing a crisis," Kaufman says. "It's a human rights crisis, and the United States is really losing ground with the rest of the world."{{cite news , url=https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/03/10/288225649/rights-advocates-see-access-to-justice-gap-in-u-s , title =Rights Advocates See 'Access To Justice' Gap In U.S. , date=March 10, 2014 , work=NPR

References

Law firms established in 2011 Internet properties established in 2011 Online marketplaces of the United States American legal websites