Lisa Bloom on Avvo’s Naked Law Blog

NakedLaw, News

Hey friends!  Big news. As of June 1st, I have joined Avvo as a legal advisor and analyst, reinforcing my goals of encouraging a more informed legal consumer, making law accessible to everyone and helping people make smarter legal decisions.

You might think this all sounds lofty, right? Wrong, let me explain.

For most of my life, the rule has been that anyone seeking legal advice has to hire a lawyer, generally spending thousands of dollars just to get simple answers to their questions.  This has always struck me as wrong.  The law applies to all of us.  Shouldn’t we all have a way to understand it without breaking the bank?

As a civil rights attorney, I have spent my career helping ordinary people seek justice in their lives.  But because I have a small boutique law firm, I can only take on a limited number of cases at any given time.  The overwhelming majority of people who contact me get turned away (though I always try to find them a good lawyer).  It’s always sad when I can’t help someone who really needs answers and guidance.  So when the folks at Avvo.com told me the idea behind this Naked Law blog – providing law for the people – I jumped at the opportunity.

In my first book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, I encourage women (and men!) to approach any problem with open eyes and an open mind, and get the facts. Each of us, when confronting any challenge in our lives, should take the time to gather all the important information, appraise it objectively, and then reach a conclusion. As I have often said, knowledge is power.  As I say in Think:

Every fearsome challenge in my life has taken me to the library (and, later, to the Internet) to research it, learn about it, and then to devise strategies to overcome it. It ain’t easy, but it’s the only way I know. Think.

But what if you have a legal problem?  Most non-lawyers can’t to do legal research, which is highly specialized and takes years of law school and practice to master.  This is where Avvo.com comes in.

Avvo.com is truly revolutionary, and I don’t use that term lightly.  Because for the first time, ordinary people can get real lawyers to answer their questions – for free!  How does it work?  Avvo.com is a social media platform that provides consumers with free and direct access to legal (and medical!) professionals. It’s amazing to me that more than 100,000 lawyers are actively participating on Avvo.com answering tens of thousands of consumer legal questions, and embracing the Internet as a way to provide transparency to the profession.

I encourage you to become more empowered, to harness the power of the Internet to get your basic questions answered and get educated before you see an attorney.   The law doesn’t just exist for giant corporations with expensive attorneys on retainer.  It’s here for all of us.

I’m planning to contribute posts to this blog on a regular basis so check back often. And while you’re at it, take a spin on Avvo.com.  Go ahead, I dare you:  ask your legal question!  And let me know how it goes!

The opinions expressed here represent my own and not necessarily those of Avvo.com.