Co-founder of access to justice legal tech company People Clerk

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Camilla Lopez, co-founder of access to justice legal tech company People Clerk, joins host MC Sungaila to share her journey to becoming a lawyer-entrepreneur who helps individuals navigate small claims court. She discusses what's involved in running a successful start-up, from funding the company's growth (People Clerk is a Techstars alum backed by Google's Latino Founders Fund) to finding the right mentors and listening to customer feedback in expanding and growing their services.

Relevant episode links:

People Clerk, Duke Law Tech Lab, LexisNexis, LexLab at UC Hastings, Techstars , Courtroom5, LegalTechLIVE, CamilaLopez@peopleclerk.com, My Beloved World 

About Camila Lopez:

CEO & Co-Founder @ People Clerk. Camila is an attorney, consumer advocate, and mediator. Her passion is breaking down complicated legal processes so that people without an attorney can get justice.

As an attorney, she had family and friends constantly reaching out to her with their legal problems. She quickly realized that many of their legal problems were considered “small claims” as they related to security deposits, contracts, and car accidents. But when she referred them to small claims court, the "People's Court", they were quickly overwhelmed and frustrated by the process.

She started watching hundreds of small claims hearings and she realized that people were consistently unprepared for their hearings. They would show up missing one of the key procedural steps like correctly filing the small claims lawsuit and serving the other party. They would also show up to their hearings without the correct evidence or disorganized evidence which would lead to frustrated judges and disappointing results. This made her realize that the "People's Court" wasn't serving those who needed it the most.

With her co-founder, Gustavo Lozano, an engineer and product manager, they built People Clerk to help individuals navigate the court system in an easy and affordable way. As the Chief Legal Architect at People Clerk, she has designed the People Clerk platform so that individuals can learn how to pursue their small claims lawsuits on their own.

Her mission is to highlight the struggles of people without an attorney when they interact with courts and government agencies. She hopes that with her advocacy, systemic change can occur so that individuals without attorneys have a fair chance when exercising their legal rights. As a trained mediator, she also has a passion for the out-of-court resolution of disputes.

Prior to People Clerk, she worked in plaintiff’s mass torts litigation (she still aspires to be the next Erin Brockovich) and in consumer protection at the New York Attorney General's Bureau of Consumer Frauds and Protection. She attended Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City where she received the Mark Whitlock Scholarship for her effort, energy, spirit, and initiative that strengthened student life and served on the leadership of the Alternative Dispute Resolution team.

She was born in Cartagena, Colombia and has lived in Texas, Florida, New York, and California. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley, go bears!

On the weekends, you can find her paddle boarding with her dog, Galileo.

Welcome to the Portia Project, where we chronicle women's journeys to the bench, bar and beyond, and seek to inspire the next generation of women lawyers and women law students. In this episode, we have that next generation. Camila Lopez, who is the CEO and Cofounder of People Clerk, is blazing new trails with her legal tech company. I’m so interested to hear about her journey very quickly out of law school, becoming an entrepreneur, and using her legal training together with technology. Welcome. 

Thank you for having me. It's a huge honor. 

I'm so glad to have you join us and discuss. As I mentioned, I've covered both traditional and non-traditional career paths in law. I like to make sure that people consider and know the various things you can do with a law degree, so they don't reject going to law school out of hand. Especially with you and some of the other legal tech founders, very often, you are young. You're very recently out of law school and starting your companies. That's an interesting trend to see. You went from law to entrepreneurship very quickly, but let's start with law. How was it that you decided to go to law school? What did you originally envision you would do with a law degree? 

I went to law school to be a Consumer Protection Lawyer. I wanted to work on product liability cases and mass torts. I was super inspired by the Erin Brockovich movie. I wanted to work on class actions and help thousands of people fight the big corporations and get justice, so I went to law school. Prior to going to law school, I worked as a law clerk doing tobacco litigation cases and other civil litigation. During law school, I worked at the New York Attorney General's Office in the Bureau of Consumer Frauds and Protection and at a products liability firm doing mass tort cases. That's Camila as a lawyer. 

If you want, I’ll jump straight into People Clerk and how I made the leap from the law world to more legal technology. My cofounder is also my husband. He kept on overhearing my calls every time that someone would reach out to me every that they had a legal issue. It was my aunt, who the valet driver hit her car, and the insurance company didn't want to pay for the damages. 

I always kept on trying to refer them, "Go to a car accident attorney or go to this type of attorney," but then I realized that attorneys didn't want to take their cases because the economics of a case of $3,500 did not make sense. That's when he convinced me, "Instead of helping a thousand people maybe do mass torts, how about we help millions of people get justice?” I was sold almost right away. I went to small claims court. 

I wanted to make sure there was truly a problem. It was just my friends and family member that kept on calling me with their security deposit issues, their small contracts or personal loans. When I started going to small claims court, I realized that was the true law. That was the people's law. That was what I went to law school to do, help people get their day in court and it was a real legal problem. I was sold. 

That's value. You're talking about small claims court where you can't have legal representation anyway in court. I have a lot of those calls too. I get a lot of calls from friends and family or business associates like, “Can you at least walk me through the paperwork? What is it asking me?” That stuff in small claims court. The courts definitely have tried to address the procedural hurdles towards access through self-help clinics and things like that, but that's beyond small claims court. It’s starting at that very individual level, where there is no legal representation for anyone to encourage people to bring their claims. 

It depends on the state. In California, no lawyers are allowed in small claims court but in other states, it does vary. In general, even when they have a lawyer that is allowed to go to small claims court, it doesn't make sense the economics of going to court over $3,000. Even in the states where they are allowed to go or lawyers are allowed to represent parties, they don't end up representing parties. It does tend to be self-represented litigants navigating the process on their own. 

That's similar in terms of some areas of the law that have a lot more self-representation like in family law, which I talked to Erin Levine already in her company, trying to work with that issue there as well. That's interesting. That's being California-centric. In California, you can't represent but in other places, you can. The value of that in terms of legal cost and legal representation as opposed to how much you would recover, I could understand where people might say, “It doesn't make economic sense to hire a lawyer in that setting.” 

Where I do see lawyers go in is when it's a larger company and they see a lot of volumes. It makes sense to have a lawyer go represent them. I love California for that reason. California evens the playing field for everyone. Whether you're a big corporation or you are an individual, no one can have a lawyer. I think California's model is the best. It's giving a fair shot at accessing your legal rights and justice, and even the playing field. 

California evens the legal playing field for everyone. Whether you're a big corporation or an individual, no one can have a lawyer. 

Seeing things in a different way and seeing a need that you hadn't seen before is sometimes eye-opening like the value that the law can bring. I have the same perspective. I want to make a massive change, which is why I like appellate law. When I do pro bono work, my work on behalf of women and girls, it’s like, “I got one good decision on this and it's going to help a lot of people in this jurisdiction.” It's a lot of bang for the buck. 

On the other hand, I've also seen the law be very helpful to individuals in the context of collaborative courts or alternate courts for those with some trouble with the law who have other things going on. Whether they're veterans who have PTSD or addictions, the courts and the legal system collaborate and work together to help that person go back and become a productive and positive contributor to society. 

That value of that one person and the ripple effect of that one person's life changing is worth it. Sometimes when you see that, you think, “I want to do this big thing,” and the only way to do it is to think big. To see the impact on individuals and the ripple effect it has, your husband is right, it has a remarkable effect. The more individuals you can help, the better. 

I completely agree. That's why we're doing this. 

You had the idea then you're like, “Yes, there's a need.” You see a need. Most people would say, “Great. We're going to start a legal tech company.” How did that happen? 

It was talking to a lot of people who had this problem. It was going to small claims court and watching live what was happening. People would show up procedurally to the hearings unprepared. They didn't know what serving was. They would show up to the hearings, missing a key step in the process. They wouldn't even get to present their case in front of the judge because they were not procedurally prepared to move forward. Substantively, their evidence was everywhere. 

I'll never forget this moment but we watched this hearing, and Gustavo went to this hearing too. We watched an elderly gentleman try to present a bunch of receipts to the judge. The judge got frustrated because they were disorganized and he had a backlog. He had to help a lot of people get their cases going to not reschedule the hearing. The judge told him, “Give me whatever you have or come back another day.” I don't know if he ever went back another day. 

Ultimately, it’s people who don't know how to be prepared. As lawyers, we know how to be prepared. We know we have to have our trial binders and our exhibits tabbed and ready to go. Judges are impatient, but the self-represented litigant does not know that. In addition to going to small claims courts and watching hearings, we talked to a lot of people who wanted to go to small claims court but ultimately didn't, and also went through the process. 

For the people who gave up or who didn't, they kept on saying the same thing, “I called 3 to 6 lawyers and they all told me like, ‘Your case is too small,’ or they wouldn't even get a callback.” They would call the court self-help line 2 to 3 times or more and be put on hold. I've done it in LA and was put 40 to 45 minutes on hold with the self-help line, just to see what a user is experiencing. They would have to go to court to try to get help. Court clerks would turn them away because court clerks are very restricted in what they can say and can't say. 

This painted common themes. It showed us that people wanted to save time because they were spending 30 to 40 hours trying to figure out how this process works. They were tired of going to the courthouse to get information. The court information itself is extremely intimidating using words like plaintiff or defendants. They swap them. They get completely confused. They don't know who the plaintiff is or who the defendant is. That showed us what the problems People Clerk needed to solve and what they were. 

We wanted to help people procedurally navigate the process, prepare their lawsuit, file the lawsuit, serve the lawsuit and substantively prepare for the hearing. Why? It's because people want to win. They want to do it by spending the least amount of time possible. We built this web platform to help you prepare the lawsuit, file it, serve it, and you upload all your evidence. You have pictures, contracts, text messages, everything you have to prove your case and organized it into the evidence pocket for the judge. 

Our clients now have told us, “Who helped you prepare this evidence pocket? This is amazing.” I also think it's a huge value to judges and the courts. We're helping this backlog. We're helping hearings go smoother. People are showing up procedurally prepared and substantively your hearing is probably going to go faster because your evidence is organized and ready to go. 

How do you do that because you're talking about evidence, rules, the evidence code, and having the submission comply with the evidence code requirements? Is that right? 

Luckily for small claims, the rules of hearsay, everything is more relaxed. For big civil cases, you have to comply with colored paper. Whatever colored paper you have to submit your filings in and what fonts. Small claims court is a people's court. In many states, they've done away with the traditional rules that lawyers have to comply with, but our evidence packet still looks like something a judge would want to see because that's what judges are used to. It has a table of contents and is organized. Sometimes litigants can decide but choose chronologically or whatever method they prefer, so a judge can easily go through it. Sometimes, we've seen 400 pages of evidence. While a small claims case is small with the monetary limit, sometimes it can be as complex. 

What about declarations or things like that? Is it just documentary evidence and like you said, text messages usually so that's not an issue? 

You can still get declarations. Judges do prefer that witnesses go in person so that they can ask them questions. We have a lot of content on that. You can get a declaration but a judge will likely prefer your witness to go in person just to clarify some things, but we formatted it. It's a lot of legal content on how to do things. A litigant can navigate through our knowledge base and understand, "If I need a witness declaration, this is what I need,” the witness name and they need to sign it. They put their phone number, where they're located, some basic minimums, and some suggestions of what a normal witness statement or declaration would look like. 

Got it. It's addressing the issues that you identified, which included people calling you and saying, “What do I do? How do I present this? They want X, what is X? What do I do for that?” Those are a lot of the questions I get from the small claim situation too. “They need a what? What is that?” 

That's the problem we're trying to solve. It's making it easier to navigate the legal process for someone who does not have a legal background. 

How's it been going so far? How long has the company been operating? How many people have you helped so far? 

We originally launched in March 2020, and we all know what happened next. We put things like more user tests during that time. The court started opening back up around August 2020. LA started doing virtual hearings. I love LA courts, our biggest court system in the world, and they've kept their virtual hearings. That's amazing. Courts started opening back up. With virtual hearings, some courts have taken it off. At this point, we've helped thousands of consumers. We've launched in New York City and we're looking to expand to the next few states. Hopefully, at least two other states by end of the 2022. 

You're in California and New York now. Is that right? 

All 58 California counties and New York City. Five burrows in New York City. 

As you said, California's the largest legal system in the world. That's a lot. 

It is a lot. There are some nuances between the different counties. For the judicial audience here, let's work on cohesion among the different counties because that is hard to navigate through. Sometimes, it's just the court clerks deciding to either accept or reject something without seemingly written rules. While I commend the courts a lot of the time, especially the LA court system and the amazing job that they've done with the virtual hearings, there are some courts that need a lot of work. 

That's one of the challenges that lawyers have too., the different rules and the different local rules situation, and knowing that even among lawyers. We've got to phone a friend sometimes in a particular jurisdiction if we're like, “What are they doing? We're not familiar with this filing requirement.” 

We've had to code People Clerk essentially now on an almost court-by-court basis because of some nuances we've seen with different courts. Especially when it comes to virtual hearings. One part of the process with virtual hearings is now, litigants have to send their evidence beforehand. It varies by county. That also had to be quickly integrated into the People Clerk software, "Your case is filed in Orange County. Here's what the Orange County procedure is." With COVID, it is good. They were constantly iterating on their processes but for us, it was a challenging time. Now things are evened out but it was a challenging time when we launched, navigating constant changes and explaining these changes. 

I was going to say that. First of all, did your heart sink in March 2020? You were like, “Everything has stopped.” 

It was hard the first year, I was like, “Is there any cohesiveness here?” Things are constantly changing but now, it's evened out. At least for the litigants also. It’s less confusing. Courts would not be mailing notices. You're hearing now when in person or it's virtual. I feel bad when the court screws up something. We personally do complimentary people clerk offerings or refunds even though it's not our fault. It's on the court, just to make sure that the litigant has a good experience navigating the court system and the legal system. Small claims courts tend to sometimes be like it’s the first time they touch the legal system. I want to make sure that they have a good experience. 

Lawyers must ensure the litigants have a good experience navigating the court and legal systems. 

I know that's something that the courts are interested too. You don't want to discourage people from going to the law or the courts for their disputes. That way is chaos. We would rather have them doing this. It's either chaos or bitterness towards the legal system and you don't want either of those. 

I read and I love to read what the training manuals for judges are when working through self-represented litigant cases. I see that they want to tell them, "Judge, this is their self-represented litigants like their first time touching the court. Let's make sure we're kind and give a good experience. Don't get frustrated." It can be frustrating when you're so used to lawyers being in your courtroom. It's being patient. It's what makes America so great. I do think it's our legal system, so let's give them a good experience. 

In a sense of fairness, at least procedurally within that, even if it doesn't turn out your way that at least you feel like you've been heard and been able to present your case. That's what the self-help clinics are about, and that sounds like what your platform is about too in terms of getting to that point. Let's also talk a little bit about how your legal training, other than understanding the problem and the law and being able to put that together with the technology aspect. How does your legal training contribute to or impact what you're doing now? 

It has been fundamental. This would've been extremely hard to do without legal training. I'm extremely grateful for having gone to law school, having taken the bar, and becoming a member of the bar. It did give me the fundamentals I needed. One thing I am critical of is unlearning the law. I'm not always scared about what could go wrong, but what could go right. 

As the legal training teaches you, what could go wrong? What do I need to do? How do we make sure this doesn't happen? After an issue has happened, how to deal with it? It has taken a lot from me to break through that and be entrepreneurial. Take the risk like let's jump in. Most of the time, nothing goes wrong. We just have to feel confident in the product we're building and go for it and just do it because if not, we're always going to be held back. 

There are those quintessential entrepreneurial characteristics that are risk-taking within certain realms, but seeing the potential and taking a risk on that potential. To some degree, that is a little bit of the opposite of what we're trained, at least what we're trained in law school, which is to see everything that could go wrong. On the other hand, it's nice to see that and nice to have that because you can say, “I'm going to see these things. I'm going to see that potential, but then I'm going to decide as an entrepreneur, is that a risk I'm willing to take? I can now see all the risks. Now, what do we do with those?" You can't eliminate them to zero when you're building a company. It's not possible. 

Also, my background is in consumer protection and making sure it's all about the consumer. I want to be a company that has great customer service. I see all these issues before I even launched into this. I was like, “Let's fight the big corporations, this, this and this.” Now, I see it on the other side. I want to make sure we're providing the best possible service to the consumers we serve. It's extremely important to me. It is my background. Maybe we'll go a little slower because of it. At the end of the day, I want to have a business that I am proud of and that a lot of people love. 

What does good service look like and how has that evolved because you're getting feedback? You're constantly iterating I would think. 

It's a constant feedback loop. It is constantly how we started, talking to users and building a product. We are constantly talking to users. We have a phone line that is by appointment only, so we can still talk to users and understand maybe this part of the product wasn't as easy to use as we thought it was when we designed it. We keep this calendar availability always open so that users can schedule calls for us to help them walk through. 

I had someone who didn't know how to upload text message evidence. It was because the instructions weren't clearly explained like, “Take a screenshot on your phone, then log on to the People Clerk portal on your phone to upload it.” We wouldn't know that if we were a company that shut down the phone lines, no way to contact customer service. We have to be in tune with what our clients need, what they want, how they are actually using this platform, and how we can constantly make it better. I thank our clients. I'm like, “Thank you for getting on the phone with us today.” I do take the call. We have an operations team, but I love doing it because it puts me in tune with what's going on. 

I was going to ask you that. I was like, “Do you still do some of the calls?” That makes a lot of sense. 

I have these headsets. These are noise canceling because I don't want my dog barking in the background. I get on the calls all the time. I don't have these headsets for podcasts. I have them because I like to be the head of customer service. That is my role still and I love to do it. 

It's important in developing the company at this point in particular. We have sometimes an image or a sense. We see one small part of a problem where we see one aspect of it and we're working to address that, but you want to make sure that you're doing that. That's customer feedback. That's always good for any business. 

I don't think our clients know when I get on the phone. I hate for them to also know. I like to see how they treat our customer operations team as well. That's super important for me to see it from that perspective. I make sure both sides of the equation are happy. I do it for both reasons too. 

You can see how it's going internally and also get feedback from clients. You are straddling two worlds between law and technology entrepreneurship. There are two things I wanted to talk about that a little bit. One is you have had roles and been accepted into various programs that are designed to accelerate you and provide connections for your company. Do you want to talk a little bit about those and how those work and how those have helped? 

I didn't have the business background that you need to start a business and be an entrepreneur. I had a legal background, but I'm a first-time founder. I had never started a business before, let alone a technology startup. I remember myself googling the difference between a startup and a small business. I then entered the world of accelerators. That was one of the best things that could happen to me. 

I found out about the Duke Law Tech Lab then LexisNexis legal technology accelerator, LexLab at UC Hastings, then Techstars and I'll google for startups. It gave me the skills I needed to run. Not every skill because you learn as you go. It gave me the foundations of understanding what it was to build a venture-backed company or a startup. What does it mean to grow at the rate we need to be growing? What does it mean to build an MVP? How do you talk to users? How do you design and build a good customer experience? 

It also gave me the communities of founders that I'm extremely forever grateful for. I got to meet Erin Levine from Hello Divorce very early on from a connection from Duke Law Tech Lab, and Sonja from Courtroom5. It's a wonderful community. I love the legal technology community. Once we did the three legal technology accelerators then we joined Techstars. It was an opening into the world of founders and startups in more general terms and legal technology. 

It gives you tools and it gives you connections with other companies and other founders, but also with funding networks to some degree as well. Techstars is that way for sure. 

My background, I go to Stanford. I did go to Berkeley, which I'm super proud of. I wasn't part of these elite universities. I didn't have this network of people I could just call to get funding when People Clerk was ready. I'm extremely grateful to Techstars for making those connections and helping us raise our first round of funding. In addition to the accelerators, it's like founders helping founders. I love to connect with other founders and now I pay it forward helping other founders find that not all money is equal. It's important to learn from each other how to navigate this world, how to talk to investors, and how to put our best foot forward. 

I might be putting you on the spot here, but this question came to me when you were talking. When you say paying it forward, I think about that. We've talked about that quite a bit on the show in terms of mentoring. When you have been mentored, the best way to do it is to pay it forward to someone else. Mentor them and help them. If you were talking to someone in your position years ago who was starting, what are the top maybe 2 or 3 tips that you've gotten from other founders and from the accelerators that you're like, “I wish I had known X when I was starting out.” What would that be? 

One for sure is to find your cheerleaders. I can never remember whom I heard say that. Maybe it was Kristen Sonday. I don't know, but someone said, “Find your cheerleaders.” Kristen Sonday and Erin are some of mine, and Nick Rishwain from LegalTechLIVE. It's those people who you could always count on. When I don't know something, I don't pretend like I know everything. I'm very vulnerable about that. I reach out to my cheerleaders like, “Do you know anything about this? Is there someone you know that maybe you can connect me that knows about this topic?” 

I think that is extremely important. That's why it's important to go to accelerators because that's how you find your cheerleaders. I also met Kristen because of Duke Law Tech Lab. Finding people who've come before you that are more experienced is important. Now, I'm the person sometimes people reach out to asking for advice and that’s okay. I could be the cheerleader for someone else too now. I know a thing or two now. 

It’s like, “I'm a little further along. I can at least share what I have learned so far in the journey.” 

Also, what not to do is extremely important. 

Thumbs up on the accelerators in terms of so many different things. Also, the funding part is a mystery. Even people who are in business wouldn't necessarily know the difference between startups and how all the funding works, the private Angel funding and different groups. There are so many. If you're not in that space, you have no idea about it. 

Sometimes founders reach out to me regarding their contracts and investments. I'm like, “That's a whole different lawyer that you need to about this. It's a whole world. This is something that I'm just learning too. Maybe reach out to a startup lawyer for this.” I've met some good ones throughout this process, especially Alex Bruno out of LA. He’s fantastic. Your lawyer's lawyer or whatever it is that people say, and truly navigating the whole financing. It's its own world. 

I think about how the law touches so many aspects, even doing the show. You got to register your trademark. You got to do all this stuff and think as a business owner. I got to think of those things and as a lawyer, I’m like, “I see a legal issue. I have to consult.” 

All the time. Back to that point of lawyers became entrepreneurs, we sometimes get bogged down because we also know a lot. We do know at least like issue spotting. “Pause, hold on. We got to go figure this out first.” Sometimes those things can wait. At the end of the day, your core business is to provide value to a consumer about whatever it is that you're selling. Sometimes you do have to put a pause on those other things. You got to get the business going. You got to stay default alive like default positive on it first. 

That's the question of triaging different things. You're constantly triaging and assessing, “Which thing do I need to do now?” Which is nice to do? Which is like, “We got to do this. We got to take care of this.” That goes for the legal advice and things that you do also. I know there are movements of foot in different jurisdictions, Arizona, Utah and whatnot with regard to the role that legal tech can play in the legal system. It might impact you to some extent because, in other jurisdictions, it's not like California where lawyers can be present in that setting. How has that impacted your business or business model, and how do you approach things? 

At the end of the day, I don't think lawyers are ever going to get replaced. Full disclosure, we still have jobs forever because we play an extremely crucial role. You still need to provide in certain situations one-on-one legal advice. People's cases are unique and you do serve a very important role. You're researching someone's problem. You're giving very tailored advice to a situation. Wherever regulations end up on, lawyers are never going to get replaced. Always get that out of the way. 

Everything can't be automated, but I do think there's room for legal technology startups. No lawyer likes to do administrative work. I hate doing administrative work for People Clerk personally. I'm always looking for tools that are going to make me go faster for those admin tasks. People Clerk doesn't compete with lawyers. We sit in a very particular spot where you can still have a lawyer and use People Clerk. 

People Clerk is there to save you time on the procedural steps. It's there to save you time to get your evidence going together. People Clerk cannot provide legal advice. If what you're looking for is someone to tell you, “Do I have a case?” A lawyer is going to have to give you that information. I tell our clients, “You're coming to People Clerk because we know it's going to take you a lot of time going through each one of these steps. We're here to help you with the procedural aspects, checklist, and a lot of information.” 

We do provide a lot of content. For a breach of contract issue, these are common types of things you may want to think about, but we cannot analyze someone's case and tell them, “Yes, Joe. For sure you’re going to win.” We can't. I tell clients that all the time. If that's what they want, go to a lawyer to get legal advice. 

The self-help clinics that are in various courthouses, you can at least help them package what it is that they're doing in a way that at least can get to the point of having a court assess their case on the merits, whatever the outcome might be. 

I do think the self-help clinics are very limited. At the end of the day, they don't help someone end-to-end through the process. They will answer a few questions. That's where People Clerk also sits. We refer to self-help clinics all the time. Here's the small claims advisor's number. It’s questionable though because small claims advisors are also mandated. I have to double-check, but they can't provide legal advice. 

They're limited in what they can say. I have seen some and they provide legal advice. I’m thankful for them because they do serve an extremely important need, but it's very hands-off, “Here's a form. Fill it out. After you fill out this form, you still have to wait until it gets filed,” then you have to serve. You're going to have to come back to the clinic or call this number or email this number, but no one is there to hold your hand through the end-to-end process. 

That's true. Even if you go to the clinics, there are a lot of volunteers. A lot of us lawyers volunteer there a few hours at a time. The next time you come to that clinic, you're not going to meet with the same person. It would be a different person. 

People Clerk, if you think about it, it's a case management system for self-represented litigants navigating small claims. It tells you, “This is the first step.” We hold your hand through each step in the process. You can still consult a lawyer. You can still go to the small claims clinic, but it's keeping every step extremely organized so nothing falls through the cracks, “Now I have to prepare for the hearing. How do I prepare for the hearing? What do I need to say to the judge? What should I not do? What should I wear? How do I even put all these documents together? What is this all mean?” That's where People Clerk sits. We all need to work together to get as many people to access their legal rights as possible. There are enough cases for all of us and there is room for a lot of opportunity. 

Is there anyone else in your particular space now or are you a first mover? 

There are competitors. There's a lot and it's getting more competitors every day. It's interesting though because I do think we focus on how someone wins because that's what the clients want. They want to know how to win. We put a lot of time into providing good content so that if someone cannot afford a lawyer or cannot afford to go to the small claims advisor or wait 40 minutes on the phone to get information from a small claims advisor, they can log into People Clerk and check out our knowledge base with all of this content of how the law works. 

I know that there are some courts that not only have self-help clinics but also have these port court navigators. I don't know how those work. I think LA has them also, but I don't know whether they also carry through. It's basically, you can call them and they can help you at various points, but it's not that they carry you through the whole process of getting your documents into court. 

I group them into the same small claims advisors and they look different in every court just like a point of information. Not all courts have small claims advisors. If anyone here works in the court system, I have a whole list of small claims advisors. I sometimes rank them which ones are the best and which ones are not. I would love to talk to someone about this, and how to make sure all courts have a small claims advisor available or at least somewhere where someone can go. 

Even though People Clerk is extremely affordable, we charge a $149 flat fee plus a few additional services, not everyone can still afford People Clerk. It's extremely important that courts keep those resources. The public needs it. They need this help. I've never seen a program, whether small claims advisors or court navigators that will walk you through each step of the process. It's on you to do this. You got to figure it out. If you want to come back a few more times to get help for this particular issue, you can. I know that's not what people need. They need to know every step and feel confident in what they're doing, not waste their time continuing going back to the court and waiting on hold. 

That's what the People Clerk could do and it's scalable. We can help millions of people instead of a human or a terrible voice recording that some courts have and it's like, “Press 1111.” They want to know what to do and not have to wait a bunch of time to get the help they need. Plus, it's a timing issue. People have to get childcare and get on the 405 to go to court. That's also not helpful either. 

That's true. If there isn't a telephonic option, then you have to go to the self-help clinic during its timeframe or whatever and go to talk to someone. That's a very different proposition in terms of how much time you need to allocate for that. 

If anyone wants me to share that information and that data, call me. Let me know at CamilaLopez@peopleclerk.com. 

You have some feedback yourself on that. 

I have a lot of feedback. 

Discussions with people, for sure. You're very early in your career journey, but would you have any advice for those who are graduating from law school and maybe would want to consider combining law with entrepreneurial adventures as well? Any advice for them? 

Network. We made our first attorney hire straight out of law school because of networking. I knew her. She started doing some side projects for People Clerk. If this is something you want to dig deeper into, network and keep your eyes out there for companies that are changing how the law works. I used to roll my eyes when they would tell us to network, but now I get it. It's important and it's fine. You make friends throughout the process. 

That's what I was going to say. Networking has some icky vibes associated with it. I try to think of it in terms of relationship building and learning, being interested in other people, learning about them, and getting to know more people. That sounds like a lot more fun than networking. Also, when people think about networking, especially students, they are like, “I have to talk to someone to get something immediately. I'm going to talk to this person and there's going to be a deliverable at the end of this.” Anyone sees that coming from a mile away. I’m always going to conferences and people are looking down at your name badge to see if you're someone important they should meet or not. If they think you're not, they move on. 

I remember that as a young attorney. I felt rejected and you were. That person isn't someone you want to meet anyway because that's someone who's super transactional. Networking is not an immediate transaction. As you said, it’s getting to know people in a certain ecosystem. What you said about how you hired your first attorney is very similar to what I've heard from public interest organizations. 

Whether you're in a nonprofit or a public defender's office, it can be hard to get a job in those settings. The number one recommendation they say is basically intern. Have some situation where you get to know people, then they're not hiring a number. They know your work and they know you. They have a certain amount of trust that when there's an opening, you'll be in a better position to be there, to know about it, and to be chosen. 

You said the keyword. It's trust. We're still early on and finding who our first teammates were going to be, it was a lot about it. Do we trust this person? We're in a very important place in the company now that we have to roll in sync, as corny as that sounds, we need to all trust each other. You build that through connecting with people, networking, and getting to know someone. 

Companies need to build a strong network by securing trust in each other. 

When I go to networking events, I'm looking for new friends, someone I'm going to be inspired by, and someone I want to follow on LinkedIn. In part, I do want people to enrich my life. It isn't about that transactional like, “I know I'm going to get something from them.” When you look at it that way, it’s boring. It doesn't feel authentic. Be yourself when you're going to conferences and looking for people you enjoy speaking with, and that you're going to learn a lot from. 

I wanted to make sure to address that because people hear that and they turn it off. They tune out and go, “I can’t do that.” You demystify what we're talking about when we say that. It's not traditional what people think it is. Very good. I think that's excellent advice and real-life. It’s your actual story and be like, “We hired someone and here's how it happened.” That's what we're talking about. 

If you're looking at an early-stage company probably later, one big criteria is also a passion for the problem we're trying to solve. If you're looking for a legal technology startup, make sure you are a true believer in the mission. Even if you're going to a law firm, you have to believe in what they're doing because what's the point of working crazy hours? Even putting aside legal tech startups, the job of a lawyer is hard. You better like what you're doing. You better believe in the people you're working with like your teammates. It's not easy. Make sure you find something you're extremely passionate about because you're going to be hustling. You're going to be working hard. You don't want to be working hard for something that you don't believe in. 

People find meaning in different ways and that's part of the show too. It’s how people contribute in the sense of meaning that they get from their work, but being open to that about what that is for you. You gave a good recipe for a good founder and a good company. You have seen a problem. You're passionate about fixing that problem. You're moving forward to do that. That's a quintessential good startup. 

It does have to be something more important than money. While money can solve a lot of things, that's not the purpose of why we're here. Make sure you find something that moves you other than money because I don't think you're going to live a very fulfilling life that way. 

That's a good point. Money is helpful but it's also good if it's not the only thing that's motivating you. Thank you so much. I appreciate this discussion. It has been great. I've been happy to learn about how your company operates and a little bit more about you as well as a leader. Normally, I end with a few lightning-ground questions. I'm going to go over a few of those with you. Which talent would you most like to have but don't have? 

I do wish I could code. 

I was going to say that. You have your cofounder. 

I'm glad I have a cofounder but sometimes, I want to do something quickly. I wish I would know how to code, but I have other good qualities that can be complementing themselves. If I had one, I would want to know how to code. 

That would be very helpful for your setting. Who are your favorite writers? 

Dan Brown and Sonia Sotomayor. 

Do you mean her judicial opinion writing or she's got her own book too? 

Her book and her opinions. I enjoyed her book. One of my favorites is My Beloved World. The third is Ben Horwitz. I didn't think I was going to say that when I first read his book but he grew on me. 

That's eclectic. I like that. Who is your hero in real life? 

Kristen Sonday is one of my heroes for sure. I want to be her when I grow up. I want to be the founder she is. She has driven companies. She cares about building something that is extremely impactful in people's lives. It's her for sure. I'm inspired by her every day. 

For what in life do you feel most grateful? 

My cofounder. He's also my husband. I am grateful. He has some good qualities. We do complement ourselves very well. I am grateful I found him. 

How did you guys meet or how long? You're very young. 

We met twelve years ago. Our families go back for generations. We grew up in the same small town of Cartagena, Colombia. Our families, our grandparents, our friends, and our dads were neighbors. It's a small town. I think it was meant to be. 

That's amazing. I'm so glad I asked. That's a great story. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite to a dinner party or as a dinner guest? It could be more than one person if you want like a group too. 

Michelle Obama and Sonia Sotomayor, for sure, and RBG. Let's add her to the mix too. 

That's good. That's a good crew. I also think when you invite more than one, I feel like the conversation and the mix of the different people would create its own separate interesting event, so I like that. Last question, what is your motto if you have one? 

Being empathetic. It's like a theme in my life. It's one of our core values at People Clerk too. It's important. As a lawyer, you get used to clients' problems. You forget that for them, it feels like it is the end of the world. It’s always bringing empathy to everything we do. Whether you're practicing law in the traditional sense or you're building a legal technology startup, at the end of the day, you're building a product for a user. You're trying to solve one of their problems, but you need to come into it with that context. You have to be extremely empathetic, step into their shoes, and see what they're going through. It has become my life motto. I was also trained as a mediator. I didn't realize how important that was during that mediation training, so I embraced it. 

Whether you are practicing law in a traditional science or building a legal technology start-up, you are creating something that will help people solve their problems. 

That's a good approach to your personal life and professional life as well. That's a good reminder as lawyers and business people to be empathetic towards the people we're serving and helping and trying to put ourselves in their shoes. That could be challenging sometimes because there's enough going on in our minds as lawyers like, “We're working on your problem and we see a legal problem,” but there's a person with that legal problem. 

You jump straight into solutions. Even in your personal life, what people need isn't always jumping to a solution but someone to listen and try to understand what is it that they're going through. It falls for friendships, family, the law and founders. I love it. I do a lot of thinking about that. In general, it’s how we can be more empathetic and that's how we also approach customer service at People Clerk. 

That's a great way to end and a great thing to close out with to have people consider, be kind, and have some empathy for others. You never know what they might be going through at any particular time. Thank you so much for joining the show, Camila. It has been a joy to meet you and interesting to learn about what you and your company are doing, and doing it so soon out of law school. Congratulations on how far you've come. I look forward to seeing what you do next. 

Thank you. This was an amazing experience. I hope the audience has some key takeaways, whether it's how to launch a startup, in your legal career, and generally, how to network and be empathetic in your everyday life. 

There are a lot of good nuggets and wisdom that you've shared, and insights that you've learned along the way. Thank you so much for joining the show. 

Thank you for having me.