Agnieszka Stach holds a rather radical belief: that the law is ours and should be understandable by everyone. While this might be obvious to you and me, Agnieszka is a law student hoping to one day earn her living as a lawyer. In other words, her financial interests and future professional standing lie in us understanding as little of the law as possible. Does that mean she wants to do herself and her peers out of a job?
Not at all. In fact, Agnieszka is a strong advocate for the “prophylactic” use of lawyers. She argues that these days, ordinary people go to lawyers the way they went to dentists 30 years ago: only when they are in so much pain that they can no longer ignore it. Unfortunately, this approach leads to far too many teeth being pulled that could have been saved had their owners sought treatment earlier. Agnieszka argues that it’s pretty a similar situation for legal advice.
It all started when Agnieszka tried out writing down the law she was studying at the Jagiellonian University as algorithms. It just seemed like a natural way of understanding what was going on and many of her classmates agreed – she got so many requests to share them that she decided to publish them on her blog. She wants to make it possible for anyone to understand the laws of the land, and not just highly paid lawyers. The blog took off almost immediately! Her original goal was to make legal information accessible, but she soon found that she was getting constant requests for legal opinions on specific situations.
At TEDxKraków, Agnieszka will argue that setting this information free is not ruining the market as some of her peers (and professors) have suggested but is ultimately beneficial for both parties. She says that a more informed public means more informed clients that call on lawyers more often, in a preventative way.