With warnings coming thick and fast about the stark ramifications of the government’s sweeping cuts to legal aid, it was probably inevitable that someone would come up with a new way to plug some gaps in access to justice. Enter the legal crowdfunder, CrowdJustice, an online platform where people who might not otherwise get their case heard can raise cash to pay for legal representation and court costs.

The brainchild of 33-year-old lawyer Julia Salasky, and the first of its kind in the UK, CrowdJustice provides people who have a public interest case but lack adequate financial resources with a forum where they can publicise their case and, if all goes to plan, generate funding for legal action by attracting public support and donations.

“We are trying to increase access to justice – that’s the baseline,” says Salasky. “I think it’s a social good.”

The platform was launched just a few months ago, but has already attracted a range of cases both large and small, including some that could set important legal precedents.

We are emphatically not a replacement for legal aid. But access to the courts is a democratic right

CrowdJustice has helped the campaign, Jengba (Joint Enterprise: Not Guilty by Association) to raise funds to intervene in a supreme court case to consider reforming the law of joint enterprise that can find people guilty of a crime, including murder, committed by someone else. The group amassed £10,000 in donations for legal assistance as part of their ongoing challenge to the legal doctrine of “joint enterprise”, which disproportionately prosecutes people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds for violent crimes where it is alleged they have acted together for a common purpose.

In another case, a Northern Irish woman who discovered she wasn’t entitled to her partner’s occupational pension after he died because of a bureaucratic requirement that did not apply to married couples, used CrowdJustice to help raise money to take her case all the way to the supreme court. “If she wins, it will have an enormous precedent-setting value for the legal rights of all couples who cohabit,” Salasky says.

Then there’s the group of women who had never met, but found each other online and banded together to launch a petition. They have managed to accrue their target funds to hire a lawyer and determine whether they have a solid case to challenge changes to the implementation of pension laws that they argue leave women born in the 1950s at a disadvantage.

Salasky says CrowdJustice is a way to fight a public interest case while eliminating at least some of the financial pressure. As long as applicants meet specific criteria, including already having a lawyer on board (the site doesn’t offer legal representation or advice itself, just an opportunity to find potential donors) and proof that their case affects the wider community, not just their own personal interests, they can apply to be featured. Applicants who need money to cover legal advice or who require extra money to take an existing case to the next stage can request a “case page” on the site. Donors can then make pledges and – only if the total goal is reached – the cash is deducted from donors’ cards and deposited with the case’s legal representative. CrowdJustice takes a 5% cut from donations.

“I see us as a cross between crowdfunding and petition sites, where people want to give something; they want to effect social change. [The law] gives it some teeth,” says Salasky.

As a result of legal aid cuts brought in under the coalition government, pursuing access to justice for people who lack independent financial means has become markedly more germane, Salasky suggests. “I think it’s hugely important work. Lawyers in this area are increasingly looking for ways to fill the gap because, I don’t want to overstate it, but access to law for vulnerable people really is in jeopardy. One of the real tragedies of the cuts is that fewer lawyers will go down this road.”

The issue of access came into sharp focus for Salasky as a young trainee with a big international law firm. She was placed at a London legal aid clinic for a stint in 2009, where she encountered overstretched staff with vulnerable clients, including people with debts and at risk of losing their homes, who were in disputes with landlords. “That was the moment I really first saw the extraordinary difficulty that comparably less well-off people, or particularly vulnerable people, have in accessing legal services at all,” she says. Having gone then to work for the UN, Salasky explains that she decided to do something “to create positive change. What I think is going to be helpful is rolling up my sleeves and building something that can actually help people.”

She says it is vital to understand that it is not only people poor enough to be affected by legal aid cuts who need assistance. “The barriers to entry in terms of cost can be very high. It’s always been hard, but it’s getting much, much harder. Even if your lawyers are doing it pro-bono, even if your lawyers are doing it no win, no fee, there are still huge costs to even crossing the threshold of the court. And that’s true for all sorts of cases.”

“Crowdfunding is something that has happened offline in some legal cases for a long time [and] in fact, when I started telling lawyers before we launched quite a few [said] they couldn’t believe it [an online venture] hadn’t been done before, as people saw the need increasing.” Salasky hypothesised that if communities and wider society could be made aware of a case that might affect them, be it about employment rights, local environmental concerns, or entitlement to benefits, and then given a way to make a contribution, “even if only a couple of pounds”, to support it, they would. “I think there’s a huge power in communities and people’s ability to come together, and technology obviously amplifies that. It wouldn’t have been possible in the recent past even to know that a legal case that might affect you was going ahead, let alone have the ability to come together with others in your community to support it.”

Salasky, who runs the venture with the help of a small team of lawyers and volunteers, is adamant that CrowdJustice is not a substitute for legal aid, and rebuts any suggestion that it lets the government off the hook by picking up its slack. She says she would still be among those calling on the government to fund legal aid sufficiently. “We are robustly, emphatically not a replacement for legal aid. We are just saying, if you need to access the courts to obtain an outcome, either way – then that is a fundamental social good and democratic right.

“I think most people would agree that society as a whole probably benefits from people at every level being able to access justice and legal advice. I’m sure that there are all sorts of knock-on implications of people not being able to access those rights.”

Ultimately, says Salasky, crowdfunding like this empowers individuals and communities to do something that can achieve social change through the law. “That’s an extraordinary thing to be able to do.”



Curriculum vitae

Age 33.

Lives North London.

Family Engaged to be married.

Education Norfolk Academy, Virginia, USA; University of Virginia, BA politics and foreign affairs; Oxford University, Magdalen, visiting student, philosophy, politics and economics (PPE); London School of Economics, MScinternational relations; College of Law and BPP Law School; postgraduate law.

Career 2015-present: founder, CrowdJustice; 2011-14: lawyer, United Nations; 2008-11: trainee/associate, Linklaters.

Interests Writing, running, coffee.