Learning About Your Rights Shouldn’t Be Frustrating: Access to Justice and Class Action Lawsuits
John Henry Frankel, Legal Communications Technologist
Have you ever felt frustrated trying to read a letter or email indicating you could be part of a class action lawsuit?
If you just answered ‘yes,’ you are not alone. Many people find them confusing and frustrating.
That letter or email, called a “class notice,” is an important legal document, and usually the main way people learn that they can get money and other benefits from class actions.
Unclear class notices create a problem: people can’t understand their legal rights when they are part of class actions.
When people don’t understand their rights, access to justice - and sometimes access to money - is blocked.
To fix this problem, the Impact Fund created the Notice Project. The Notice Project’s goal is to improve access to justice in class action lawsuits by transforming how lawyers deliver critical information to the people in class actions.
Why are your legal rights hard to understand in class actions?
Learning about your rights should be as easy as floating downstream.
Class action lawsuits are a legal mechanism with incredible capacity to drive widespread change and hold corporations and governments (federal and state) accountable.
Once a class action is settled, though, a significant challenge remains: informing the people in the class action about their rights, which may include that they are eligible to receive monetary compensation for the harm they have suffered.
The problem?
Many class notices are confusing to look at and filled with dense legal jargon, making them annoying to read and harder to understand.
Reimagining the Class Action Notice
The Notice Project has created two tools for lawyers to facilitate clearer communication with people in class actions:
Templates that lawyers can use to create class notices that are more visually appealing and user-friendly for class members.
Software to help lawyers simplify the language they use in class notices.
Every class action lawsuit deserves notice that is great looking and clearly worded. That’s why we’re releasing our class notice templates to the community – at no cost.
Our New Class Notice Templates
Above, on the right, you can see Impact Fund's new templates for class action notices alongside another, on the left, commonly used class notice template currently available.
To create our new templates, we used Impact Fund’s expertise in class action litigation, and collaborated with judges, graphic designers, and plain language experts.
Our new templates prioritize visual clarity, using large fonts, bright colors, and informational diagrams to present information in a way that caters to all types of learners. We’ve also ensured our templates are accessible, so that people with visual impairments can more easily understand their legal rights in class actions.
Your rights should be easy to understand
The Notice Project embodies our dedication to advancing social justice by addressing the problem of class notices that frustrate readers. By helping lawyers draft class notices that better inform and catch the eye of class members, we can make it easier for people to understand their legal rights, participate in class action lawsuits, and receive the benefits they deserve.
The Notice Project is more than a set of tools; it is a testament to our belief that clear legal information should be within reach for everyone affected by a class action.
We look forward to working with like-minded advocates towards ensuring that justice is served in a way that is simpler, clearer, more effective, and accessible. That means more access to justice for you, and a less stressful way to claim what’s rightfully yours.
