James “Jim” Sandman, president of the Legal Services Corp. (the largest U.S. funder of civil legal aid programs) is a bold advocate of technology and paraprofessionals in his fight to improve the dismal options available to civil litigants who do not happen to be wealthy.

I recently interviewed Sandman for Bloomberg BNA Big Law Business, and he eloquently and dramatically detailed the challenges—and opportunities—to ameliorate these truly dire situations. Most Americans—including lawyers—don’t realize that there is no right to counsel in a civil case, he says. Like the Yankee’s famous closer Mariano Rivera, Sandman’s passion is palpable. His arguments for more adoption of technology and for more paraprofessionals are compelling, and his observations are profoundly relevant to our CodeX missions.

Said Sandman: “The do-it-yourself movement is pervasive across all segments of the economy today. It’s not going away, and anyone who thinks law is immune to it is delusional.” Check out the interview: http://t.co/dZIVEMnRhV

Outgoing American Bar Association president William Hubbard created the ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Services during his one-year tenure. In May, the ABA and Stanford Law joined forces to present a three-day “National Summit on Innovation in Legal Services.” Sandman was one of the speakers on the panel, “Innovations Within the Legal Sphere.”  The panel also included CodeX visiting Professor Oliver Goodenough, Stanford Fellow Margaret Hagan, LegalZoom CEO John Suh, Lucy Bassil (Asst. GC at Microsoft), and me. Check out the Legal Talk Network special report podcast with the panelists here:   http://bit.ly/1B19Rpy.

Monica Bay is a Fellow at CodeX and is a freelance journalist for Bloomberg BNA Big Law Business. She is a member of the California bar. Twitter: @MonicaBay. Email: mbay@stanford.edu.