(Originally published by LawSites on February 26, 2024)

On the first Earth Day in 1970, cartoonist Walt Kelly created a poster proclaiming, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” This observation applies manifestly to our court systems: an inefficient and complicated civil justice system has become its own greatest enemy, frustrating its very purpose of providing access to civil justice for all.

Bob Ambrogi recently contrasted the efficiency and elegance of legal-tech tools available in the corporate sector with those designed for the civil justice system. While Bob correctly pointed to systematic underinvestment in legal tech tools for civil justice as one cause, it’s a second order cause at best: funding alone will not close the gap.

(Continue reading the opinion essay on LawSite’s page here)

Mark Chandler is a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School and a Fellow at the Rhode Center, and helps lead Stanford’s Filing Fairness Project. From 2001- 2021 he was Chief Legal Officer of Cisco Systems.

Jess Lu is a third year law student at Stanford Law School and a Civil Justice Fellow at Stanford’s Deborah L. Rhode Center for the Legal Profession. She was formerly a Senior Associate Consultant at Bain & Co.