Ep 103: The Founders of Findlaw and Justia on 25 Years of Making Law Free

Twenty-five years ago, in the still-fledgling days of the web, the husband-and-wife team of Tim Stanley and Stacy Stern founded FindLaw and quickly developed it into the most highly trafficked legal site on the internet. In 2001, they sold FindLaw to the West Group, and two years later, they founded Justia, repeating their earlier success and then some with what is now one of the most popular legal sites in the world.  Throughout, their mission has remained the same: to make law and legal resources free for all. Whereas FindLaw started as a modest collection of links to legal resources, Justia is now one of the largest databases of cases, codes, and other legal resources, all available for free to the site’s visitors. It also supports various public interest and pro bono projects, including the Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center, the LGBTQ Legal Resource Center, and the Supreme Court Center. Justia supports all this by selling law firm marketing services, including a lawyer directory, SEO, websites and blogs.  In this episode of LawNext, Stanley, CEO, and Stern, president, both lawyers by education, discuss how they came to start FindLaw, the sale to West, starting again with Justia, their future plans, and their thoughts, after 25 years, on how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go towards providing free access to law.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  ASG LegalTech, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. XIRA.com, where potential clients find, book and meet with attorneys; and where attorneys get free, fully integrated practice management software. Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.  Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.  A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.