In Australia the legal system faces a sad reality. If you can’t afford a lawyer, then you can’t access justice.

What that means in practice is a situation few would be willing to confront. Take the ACT Women’s Legal Centre: if it loses $100,000 in federal funding, it will not be able to support 500 women over the next years. Two thirds are likely to be the victims of domestic violence, and two thirds will have no-income or earn less than $35,000 per year.

That some of the most vulnerable in our society struggle to access the justice they deserve is a consequence of what former High Court Justice Michael Kirby describes a Rolls Royce legal system.

“When a client can afford lawyers and get to courts, the standards are very high,” he says.

“Most people drive second-hand Holdens and can’t afford lawyers. For the moment, we continue to improvise with pro bono and limited public legal aid. Finding solutions to access to the law and justice is the biggest challenge for Australian judges and lawyers in the 21st century.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of self represented litigants is rising. This is backed up by research commissioned by the Law and Justice Foundation of New South Wales in 2012 that found many people do not get legal help because they don’t know how, think it will be too stressful, or simply because they don’t believe they can afford it.

When people are forced to act for themselves it often leads to poor outcomes. There is a well known saying amongst lawyers: “a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client”. This is because it is much harder to negotiate or deal with conflict on your own behalf than with someone to help you.

You would think that given how important the legal system is to our society, and in particular the importance of community’s faith in government, that Legal aid programs would be adequately funded. Instead, the opposite is true. Legal aid funding has been falling for almost two decades, despite the public’s need for legal help increasing.

As it stands, it has been estimated that just eight per cent of Australians are eligible for legal aid. A far greater proportion of Australians cannot afford a lawyer. How can this gap be filled?

Community legal centres, through no fault of their own, cannot pick up the slack. Amid a constant battle for funding, they are struggling to stay open. Most already operate on a shoestring budget, with lawyers working on a contract basis with limited job security.

At LawAdvisor we want to be part of the solution. We have built a ‘market network’ for legal services. An online platform that allows clients to source reliable, basic legal advice, easily access a variety of legal providers, and offers those providers a software-as-a-service product. It makes it possible for every lawyer to operate as an online firm, decreasing costs and increasing access.

For someone outside the system, who doesn’t know a lawyer, or where to find one, technology can vastly improve their outcomes. At LawAdvisor clients are able to receive quotes from multiple lawyers, giving them the context required to make the best decision when selecting a lawyer.

But we also recognise we’re just a young startup that can only do so much. It will take a community-wide effort. All Australian governments need to recognise the importance of legal aid programs and community legal centres and give them proper financial support. Lawyers need to think about how they can better provide cost-effective legal help.

Most importantly, the complexity of our legal system needs to be addressed. Costly court procedures fail to provide real justice if they are too expensive for ordinary people. We must grapple with the reality that the legal system only works for the rich. We’re trying to address this at LawAdvisor. It’s not easy, and we can’t do it alone, but it must be done.