A platform born out of an experience with a faulty car has formally launched to the public today (14 July), enabling consumers and SMEs to ‘find others’ to kick off a group action or campaign group. The aptly named ‘Find Others’ platform has financial backing from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, ASX-listed class action law firm Shine Justice, and an associate from US law firm Brown Rudnick. The global investment reflects the fact that the ambition is for the platform to have a global user base.
In addition to enabling consumers to connect with others affected by the same issue as them, Find Others also helps lawyers with cases that affect a group of people to find and capture more potential claimants without the expense of creating bespoke websites and onboarding tools.
While in the United States and Australia class actions can be brought on an ‘opt out’ basis, in the UK, with exceptions, they must be largely ‘opt in’.
Find Others’ development was supported by a £50,000 award from the Solicitors Regulation Authority last year as part of its Legal Access Challenge, which aims to broaden access to legal help for individuals and small businesses through technology. Find Others was at the time of the award called Glow, but has subsequently rebranded.
It received an undisclosed sum from Shine Justice, where CEO Simon Morrison said: “We are very impressed by Find Others and believe they have created something extremely powerful and capable of reinventing the group litigation sector. We are very excited to be joining their journey as investors.”
Razzaq Ahmed, an associate at Brown Rudnick and investor in the platform said: “For me, Find Others is not just a tech platform, it’s a movement to support group claims that might otherwise go unnoticed or fail to get going. That is the epitome of access to justice at its most basic level in a legal market faced with unending complexities and inefficiencies.”
The platform is already helping families unite to form Victims, Injured Bereaved UK (VIB UK), a group fighting for a fair compensation scheme for those severely injured or bereaved by the Covid vaccine.
It is now launching both to the legal profession and to the wider public. Law firms can sign-up for free to appear in the legal directory and can also manage and grow their legal action via the platform.
Founders Georgina Hollis and Amar Chauhan say that for consumers, the best way individual ‘Davids’ can take on ‘Goliath’ defendants is to join forces and have a powerful collective voice.
Chauhan said: “Find Others came out of our experience of a faulty car. It turned out that we were not alone, but we were unable to find other owners easily. Getting a group together to take action was incredibly difficult, so we decided to make it easier.
“It has been normalised that organisations can break the law and get away with it. Sometimes it’s because people do not band together. Other times it’s because the damage suffered individually does not make it worth taking action. These problems can be addressed by grouping together.”
Hollis added: “We realised that all of these people had no way of finding out that they weren’t the only one who had suffered this miscarriage of justice. We want to democratise the legal market.”
To learn more how the platform can help law firms, and register to be in the directory, go to https://findothers.com/legal-tools.