Picture this: you’ve been a victim of a fender-bender. You want to recoup the damages but aren’t sure where to go from here. You’re not alone. I started my company, People Clerk, to help the millions of similarly situated individuals all across the country navigate the often-times confusing small claims court process. And we’ve helped more than 10,000 people in asserting their legal rights.
But our ability to run our business and help people across the country is being hindered by a growing patchwork of state data privacy rules, which require us to spend our limited time and resources on compliance. Entrepreneurs like me need Congress to step in and create a uniform set of data privacy rules to ensure we can continue to bring justice-improving solutions to all Americans while creating strong privacy protections for consumers.
I’m an attorney by trade. Like many attorneys, every time anyone we know has a legal problem, we’re the ones they ask for help. Often, when I referred people to an attorney, their cases turned out not to be profitable for an attorney to take on, leaving them with limited options. That’s why my co-founder and I built our platform for consumers to navigate the small claims court process on their own without an attorney. With People Clerk, we hoped to empower everyday people to resolve their legal issues and seek justice.
People Clerk simplifies the small claims court process by guiding you through every step. From preparing your small claims and gathering evidence to filing the lawsuit and notifying the other party, our platform streamlines the entire process. So in the case of your fender-bender, you’d answer some questions about the situation and upload photos or other evidence—everything you need to prove your case. Our platform then creates court documents and organizes an evidence packet to present to a judge in the appropriate format.
As you can imagine, we are responsible for keeping all of this client information secure. We take that responsibility very seriously, and haven’t had any issues putting all the necessary safeguards in place to protect our clients’ information like encrypting data in transit and at rest, and logically isolating customer data.
However, navigating compliance with different privacy laws is difficult, especially since the rules can vary significantly from state to state. On top of that, our attorneys keep telling us that they’re still changing fast as states continue to put forward their own rules—including here in Florida. That means it’s hard for us to have a stable, up-to-date privacy policy we feel confident is fully compliant.
It’s pretty frustrating—and costly. New research shows that some startups like ours spend up to $300,000 or more on compliance, and up to an additional $60,000 or more for each state that passes a new privacy law.
Attorneys aren’t cheap. That’s why we started People Clerk, after all. As a startup, every dollar we spend on our attorneys in response to a rapidly-evolving privacy landscape is one we can’t spend on hiring, improving our platform, or helping everyday people resolve their cases.
To solve this problem, Congress needs to pass one uniform federal privacy framework that works for startups. Last month, I joined more than 60 other startups asking Congress to pass a federal privacy law that creates certainty for us as business owners, establishes baseline protections for our customers, and accounts for our limited resources as startups.
Last year, Congress came closer than ever to passing such a bill, which was overwhelmingly bipartisan and supported by Florida’s U.S. representatives on both sides of the aisle, like U.S. Reps. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., Neal Dunn, R-Fla.), Kathy Castor D-Fla., and Darren Soto, D-Fla. While that bill was far from perfect, Congress needs to keep up the momentum and enact privacy rules that work for startups like mine so that we can get back to work creating jobs and building products that solve the problems of everyday people.
Camila Lopez is the co-founder of People Clerk, a Miami-based legal technology company that helps individuals navigate the small claims court process.
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