Stacy Stern, President of Justia: “Giving people access to legal information empowers them. We wanted to do it”

WOLEP: Justia's stated mission is, indeed, making law and legal resources free for all. That's very generous - but tell us why it's also critical in today's world.

Stacy Stern: Well, there’s so much information out there, new regulations every day, so much to track. And we all are required to abide by the law. We believe people should have access to law. They should be able to have access to the information that they have to abide by. And giving people access to this information empowers them. We wanted to do it.

WOLEP: Your legal portal is really fully-fledged, with lots of resources available to many interested parties, from law students to lawyers to judges to law professors. How do you manage to cater to them all?

Stacy Stern: I want to circle back a little on the last question. There’s so much more to do. Law changes. The amount of information online has changed so much since when Tim [editor’s note – Tim Stanley, Stacy’s husband and business partner] and I started working in this area, but there’s so much left to do, and there are so many collaborators out there that we work with. For example, we work with the Legal Information Institute (https://www.law.cornell.edu), who’s like-minded, and putting up free resources. We are also working with Stanford University, with Chicago-Kent, University of Pittsburgh, University of Michigan and many others. Catering to all these different audiences, it’s a challenge for organising it all, and helping people find all the different resources on the site. Sometimes I don’t even realise what went up, then I’ll read about it and I’ll say: “Where did that come from and how do I get to it?” (laughs). It’s just so much. A lot of it overlapped, but we have been continuously working, keep adding, and adding and adding. That’s what we do. Fortunately, the groups overlapped, and we just try to add more. We try to do our best and provide people with the most relevant legal information.

WOLEP: On the same topic, your blog is regularly updated with many useful tips for legal professionals. And what I did notice is that you have law professors and lawyers on your team, your marketing team for example, who actually "walk the talk". How did these collaborations come about?

Stacy Stern: I think as we built it, we attracted like-minded people who are also interested in what we do. There are a lot of people who go to law school who want to do something good for society, and are interested in a different type of work than they might find in a more traditional legal career such as litigation.

We’ve been very fortunate to build a good team of people and it’s grown very slowly, but steadily. We are focused on continuously adding more and more and growing and keep adding. This approach has been working well for us so far.

WOLEP: How would you describe the Justia community? I've noticed that you also boast an impressive following on your social media channels, but in terms of membership, where do your members come from and what are their main areas of interest?

Stacy Stern: We are an open community of people who share and access legal information – it includes lawyers, students, laypeople, businesspeople, people who work in the government, students who are not law students yet, studying elementary school, and high school and college. We are trying to build a community where people can come in and talk about law.

In terms of our members, we do have a membership program, called Justia Connect, and any lawyer in the United States can join and become a member for free. We also have an upgraded membership program, for lawyers who want to go up a level. We’re trying to be extremely open and build a community and a place where laypeople can ask questions in website sections such as Justia Ask a Lawyer, and lawyers can respond to the questions.

WOLEP: In your opinion, what have been the most important milestones in Justia's story so far?

Stacy Stern: We’re always coming up with new things, so it’s very hard for me to pinpoint one specific thing. There are many things that I’m very excited about, and it’s just the beginning. We’re going to be coming up with some new things – we’re working on a business contract section right now, we’re redesigning our Supreme Court section, we’re constantly adding new sections. So it’s really about continuous progress. We have a wonderful team and I’m just so happy that we’ve been able to methodically grow our organization of great people.

WOLEP: Please tell us about your offices in the US and abroad.

Stacy Stern: We are headquartered in Mountain View, California, and we did have a couple of satellite offices in California, which we have closed during the pandemic, because everybody worked remotely for so long. And we also have one very beautiful office in Saltillo, Mexico – it’s a very new, state-of-the-art office.

WOLEP: Do you remember your first day in Justia?

Stacy Stern: So, my husband Tim started Justia in 2003. I was still at FindLaw (editor’s note – the legal portal that Stacy and Tim founded in 1995) at the time. I joined two years later and, when I joined Justia, we were still in our apartment, in a corporate suite. So we just rented another apartment, for our steadily growing team. It’s definitely a lot different right now, but it still has the same spirit, the same mission of making legal information and legal resources freely available.

WOLEP: Please tell us more about the "Justia Ask a Lawyer" forum - there's a lot going on in there!

Stacy Stern: You did your research really well. So, individuals go in, post a question, and the questions are organized by topic and by location. And if, say, there’s a question about business law in New York, an attorney from that area can respond to that question and could even subscribe to an update service to be alerted whenever there is a new question to answer about business law in New York. Or divorce in Georgia, or whatever area they want.

There are also lawyers who get more involved in the “Justia Ask a Lawyer” forum, and by participating, they build goodwill towards their law firm. The lawyers’ contact information and link to their lawyer directory profile are included in each answer, which gives them some marketing presence by answering the question for free. Their question also gets embedded into their profile, whether they have a free profile or a premium one, and their answers also get embedded. We definitely have some people who are very, very active in there. And they’re a very important part of what we do.

To be continued

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