A collaboration between the American Bar Association and Rocket Lawyer had led to a new program being launched that allows small business owners to get access to legal advice more easily. The program, called ABA Law Connect, has begun testing in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and California. It uses Rocket Lawyer’s cloud-computing software to create a program that allows business owners to post a legal question for a small fee. The question, and a follow-up question, if desired, are answered by lawyers who members of the American Bar Association in good standing. Then, if the small business owner is pleased with the responses, they can establish a working relationship with the lawyer that answered their questions. In this way, both sides are benefited: lawyers have access to larger number of potential clients, and small business owners can receive legal advice promptly and cheaply.

This is simply one example of the ways that the American Bar Association is trying to make legal services more accessible, a goal that Rocket Lawyer also shares. The CEO and founder of Rocket Lawyer, Charley Moore, explains that he wanted his company to “leverage technology in order to bring quality and affordable legal services to small businesses”. Though ABA Law Connect is still a pilot program, hopefully it will made more widely available in the future.

Article via ABA Journal, October 1, 2015

Photo: Heine Brothers Coffee via Independent We Stand [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]