Kip Wainscott is Head of Legal and External Relations at CrowdJustice. Kip previously held roles at the White House and Department of Justice, where he helped the Obama Administration work collaboratively with communities, stakeholders, and technologists to advance social justice.
CrowdJustice launched in the US in January. The subsequent three months have presented a number of lessons about the challenges and opportunities unique to crowdfunding in that market. Below is a review of our experience thus far.
Timing is everything
The strategy was sound, even if the choice of date was a bit quirky. We had case owners preparing their pages and were talking to press and the legal community in advance of CrowdJustice’s scheduled US launch on February 14, 2017 – Valentine’s Day. That was the plan: extending the position CrowdJustice has carved out for itself in the UK with a measured, thoughtful US launch, featuring a cohort of cases brought by several nonprofits. So why did we instead go live on January 31, 2017 with an entirely different case that had barely been filed? In a word: Trump.
On January 27, President Trump issued an executive order that, among other things, barred for 90 days entry into the US by citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries. On January 28, nationwide protests erupted, and people from the named countries began arriving in the US to an uncertain reception – some were admitted while some were turned away even if they held valid visas. In the midst of the uproar, the Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC), a Virginia-based charity that provides legal representation to immigrants and low income individuals, agreed to represent two Yemeni brothers who were turned back at the US border even though they had green cards. And to support this important case, the LAJC believed CrowdJustice could be a powerful way to share their clients’ story and potentially harness much-needed resources for their court battle.
But things had to happen fast: it was too dangerous for the Aziz brothers to go back to Yemen, and they were being shuffled from country to country while trying to challenge their exclusion from the US. So on January 31 – two days after the CrowdJustice team first spoke with the LAJC – our first US case launched. It caught fire. Capitalizing on the wave of resistance to the new administration's policy, the LAJC raised $36,600 in 5 days. While most cases raise funds for 30 days, Aziz v. Trump closed in less than a week – only stopping because the LAJC quickly prevailed in court, with the Aziz brothers allowed to join their father in Michigan.
Neutrality in a shifting legal landscape
CrowdJustice is not a political organization. However, as a platform that supports public interest litigation in the US, it is impossible in this moment to overstate the effect that the new administration has had on the priorities and caseloads of lawyers and legal organizations around the country. Attorneys and advocates across a broad range of practice areas - including immigration, civil rights, environmental, and criminal defense - are recalibrating as the Trump administration announces changes to extant policies. Federal court data, for instance, shows a 40.5% increase in the number of civil immigration lawsuits filed in March 2017 over March 2016.
What has become clear in the first turbulent months of the Trump administration is that all sorts of people from across the ideological spectrum feel a new urgency to use their voice and to pursue change. For many of these people, the legal system will be central to achieving progress, and they are turning to litigation, with its very clear stakes and human faces, as one way to rally communities in support of action.
The US reception to legal crowdfunding
As an organization that aims to increase access to justice and support those who are pursuing legal action, this is a fertile time for CrowdJustice and the response from the legal and advocacy communities has been highly encouraging. As we continue to establish ourselves as a resource in the United States, we’re working to respond to abundant levels of need and interest, while also navigating the familiar challenges of establishing brand recognition and educating those in the legal community about the existence of donation-based crowdfunding. In the US, where the legal and charity communities are vast and distributed, raising awareness of a new resource takes time.
One major market difference is the prominence of nonprofits across the US public interest legal landscape. Although lawyers take public interest and civil rights cases, the most impactful cases in the US are very often brought forward by charities. That has big implications for entering a new market, and may well be a result of different costs rules. Loser pays is a rarity here in the US, and the new rules in the UK around costs implications for interveners are anathema to the US legal system.
The individuals and organizations in the US that have chosen to work with CrowdJustice – the early adopters! – have started to become evangelists for our work. Their success translates into organic marketing that helps us as we continue making inroads within the market. In the three months since our launch, CrowdJustice has hosted cases fighting to protect voting rights, to challenge gerrymandering of electoral districts, and to stop forced labor in immigration detention. Many of these cases predate the Trump administration: they are responses to longstanding and systemic problems in American public institutions. But in this moment, when the American public – and people everywhere – are increasingly galvanized and engaged in the legal and political mechanics underpinning the health and evolution of our society, CrowdJustice is uniquely positioned to employ the power of our platform and social media to channel that energy into making concrete change through the legal system.
Have a legal case that could benefit from crowdfunding?