I was proud to be a member of the ABA’s eLawyering Task Force from around 1999 until 2003. The project’s goal was using the Internet to help provide middle class Americans with better access to legal services. That was a worthwhile goal, but I had a different reason for supporting it so strongly:
I believed that if it was successful, there would be spillover benefits to people like those I grew up with.
I grew up in McDowell County, West Virginia. At the time it was probably the poorest county in the poorest state. The poverty in McDowell County is so deep and so persistent that in 2014 the New York Times used the county in an article portraying it as the poster child of poverty in America.
To me eLawyering was not just another pro bono project. It was personal.
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