Our neighbors, our friends and our family members face an epidemic of lawsuits from predatory debt collectors—and they face them alone and uninformed. In 2011, less than 2% of civil suit defendants obtained legal counsel, which reveals two striking facts: debt collection agencies and law firms enjoy an immense advantage over self-represented litigants and free legal resources are scarce. A new free tool is trying to change this.
To increase the accessibility of legal information, the New Media Advocacy Project (N-Map) in conjunction with CLARO partners and Fordham Law School’s Feerick Center for Social Justice created a series of animated videos to educate New Yorkers about their rights in civil court.
This innovative, online legal resource provides information that proves:
- free and easily available online at clarovideo.org;
- engaging and easy-to-understand—no legal jargon;
- modular: meaning after a short survey, the website generates a series of videos unique to the legal stage of the user’s civil suit—users will not access irrelevant and potentially confusing information.
Free access to legal information means thousands of New Yorkers will no longer enter court uneducated or leave court exploited, because understanding your rights is the first step to uncovering true justice. Help us fight for fairness and due process in debt collection cases in NYC courts.
Thank you to CLARO for this post