People Clerk: Simplifying small claims court
This article is part of our series featuring the founders of our 2020 Duke Law Tech Lab startups, early-stage legal tech companies with a mission to increase access to justice. Written by Justin Reinking (Duke Law JD ’22).
As an attorney, Camila Lopez frequently received calls from friends and family asking for help with their disputes. As many of the disputes involved security deposits, property damage, and contractors Camila referred most people to the small claims process. However, she began to realize that self-represented litigants were often disadvantaged in the process due to disorganization and a lack of legal knowledge. Filing a claim in small claims court is a stressful, time consuming, and daunting process that involves writing demand letters, filing and serving claims, and presenting evidence in court.
Camila teamed up with Gustavo Lozano, a Product Manager with a background in computer science, to investigate the problem. After attending numerous small claims hearings that went awry, Camila and Gustavo dug deeper into the problem and realized that there were over 25 million households in the United States that have a small claims dispute each year. More importantly, they realized that less than 8% of those households file a small claims lawsuit likely because they did not receive adequate or affordable assistance. Therefore, they decided to start People Clerk to guide individuals through the small claims court process. Together, they are the perfect combination to create an online solution to the small claims problem.
People Clerk provides a simple 4 step process. First, users complete online questions tailored to their dispute. Second, it helps the user draft a demand letter to bring companies and individuals to the table for settlement. If the parties cannot reach a settlement, it continues to the third step where it files the necessary documents in court, informs the parties about mediation, and serves defendants. Lastly, People Clerk helps users prepare for the hearing by organizing their evidence and producing an evidence packet for them to take to the hearing.
As a public-benefit corporation, People Clerk’s mission is to expand access to the court system. People Clerk uses a “pay if you win” model, where users pay $20 upfront and $99 if they win. People Clerk is currently only available for those filing claims in California, however it plans to expand to other states soon. People Clerk hopes to continue to expand as more people with disputes learn about the product.