LegalGoGo: Crowdfunding for Legal Causes

Inspiration

In 2014 alone, 32,512 people were arrest in King County, Washington. These numbers are larger by many orders of magnitude nationally, and we live in a time where increasing scrutiny is being directed at the stories of people being arrested by police. The nation has grown increasingly wary of wrongful arrest and fairness in the judicial process, and the toll being taken on low-income and minority individuals that are most affected by these circumstances.

Indeed, being arrested has devastating effects on many aspects of a person's life. Along with time lost from incarceration, the heavy financial costs incurred by criminal defendants can cripple them far after the events that brought them have passed. The cost of retaining a lawyer, posting bail, paying LFOs, and other costs can leave an individual with few options, and trap them in cycles of debt and recidivism. Especially for low-income persons and minorities, these realities are especially severe and commonplace. Under this kind of pressure, defendants are often forced by circumstance to settle for representation they don't prefer, or to take deals that they may not have accepted with more options.

We need to do better. By shining a light on the stories of people trapped in these circumstances, and giving the community a platform to come together in support of it's own, this project aims to address these onerous issues. Everyone deserves to have the agency to choose their own destiny when they are faced with the complex machinery of the justice system, and people around the country are hungry to support the people and causes that they believe in.

What it does

Our platform combines the principals of crowdfunding with an integrated attorney referral system. It is the one-stop solution for crowdfunding legal causes by defendants, their communities, and motivated third parties who believe in the cause. When a person encounters a need for legal assistance, or the burden of a legal financial obligation, that individual or a concerned third party creates a personal campaign on the website, called the "Story". Through community outreach and exposure in social and/or news media, the story is shared with potential contributors, who can contribute to the monetary goal set by the story's creator. When the goal is met, or a specified time period expires, the story will close, and funds raised will be available for use by the story's subject. Throughout the process, an integrated database of partner attorneys will be available to the user, and upon close-of-funding, LegalGoGo will connect the user with practicing attorneys who have made themselves available to work the user's particular type/budget of case.

How I built it

Challenges I ran into

With limited time, it was difficult to construct the kind of complex, sleek integration of features that are eventually planned for the site. Things like potential mobile applications would need more planning time.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

In the short time that we were given, our team was able to construct a rough demo website, with some of the basic structure that will eventually become the more complex website.