What if one of the greatest legal risks your organization faces never appears as a lawsuit until it is already too late? For in-house lawyers, risk does not only live in contracts, regulations, or litigation strategy. It also lives in systems that quietly exclude people, concentrate power, and delay resolution. Access to justice, concerning whether there is a risk here, may sound like a public interest issue, but it directly affects trust, escalation, and long-term risk inside modern organizations.
That reality surfaced during a recent conversation with Sonja Ebron, founder of Courtroom5. An engineer by training, Sonja entered the legal system as a self-represented litigant in serious state court matters. Despite her education, she described feeling overwhelmed, outmatched, and uncertain at every step. Her experience illustrates how legal systems behave when one side holds expertise and resources and the other does not, a dynamic in-house counsel encounter more often than they realize.
Watch the full conversation with Sonja Ebron:
Power Imbalance Creates Business Risk
In-house lawyers manage power daily. They negotiate with regulators, counterparties, and outside counsel while advising leaders who ultimately decide outcomes. What is easy to overlook is how those same power imbalances affect customers, vendors, and employees before Legal ever gets involved. When one side cannot understand procedures or afford representation, disputes harden instead of resolve. These situations create an access to justice risk within the business environment.
Sonja shared that most people in court today appear without lawyers, while corporations and government entities are always represented. That imbalance fuels frustration and distrust. For companies, it means disputes that linger, costs that grow quietly, and reputational risk that compounds over time. From a legal operations perspective, unresolved power imbalance is inefficient and avoidable.
Why Early Access Changes Outcomes
Legal risk rarely begins with a complaint. It starts earlier, when people feel unheard, confused, or boxed out of a process they do not understand. When individuals cannot navigate systems, they escalate. They file claims, seek regulators, or go public. By the time Legal is notified, options are limited. To mitigate access to justice risk, early intervention through justice tools becomes crucial.
Access to justice tools act as early intervention. Clear explanations, procedural transparency, and realistic guidance help disputes resolve before they calcify. For in-house counsel, this creates leverage. Early visibility expands choice. Late visibility creates urgency. The difference is often whether people believe the system will treat them fairly.
Technology as a Bridge, Not a Shortcut
Legal technology plays a role, but it is not a cure-all. Sonja emphasized that tools can help people start, but they cannot replace strategic understanding. Automated documents without context can make problems worse, not better. This matters for legal teams evaluating tech investments and assessing potential access to justice risk.
The most effective tools reduce confusion, surface options, and encourage informed decision-making. When technology supports understanding rather than automation alone, it reduces downstream disputes and legal workload. That is where efficiency and fairness align.
What This Means for Legal Leadership
In-house lawyers do not need to run access programs to influence outcomes. They can ask sharper questions. Are processes understandable? Are disputes escalating unnecessarily? Are early resolutions possible? These questions belong squarely within legal leadership, especially when considering access to justice risk.
Access to justice is not separate from risk management. It is one of its foundations. Legal teams that recognize this can reduce conflict, protect reputation, and support healthier business relationships long before a case ever reaches court. In-house counsel who engage here strengthen trust, efficiency, and credibility while reducing long-term legal exposure significantly internally.
Watch the full conversation here: Notes to My (Legal) Self: Season 10, Episode 4 (ft. Sonja Ebron)
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