"For Rohan Pavuluri, co-founder of bankruptcy service tool Upsolve, the dearth of legal aid for low-income Americans is a pervasive reality. “There will always be more people who seek a free legal aid lawyer to help them than there are legal aid lawyers available,” he said.

The problem is particularly acute with bankruptcy, where “at least 10 times more people would benefit from bankruptcy than those who file,” he added.

To help solve this problem, Pavuluri, a statistics and computer science student at Harvard University, built Upsolve with co-founder and bankruptcy attorney Jonathan Petts. He explained that the service helps low-income clients file and prepare for bankruptcy through a series of easy-to-use web surveys, information multimedia and one-on-one teleconferencing with actual attorneys.

“Anyone can go to our website and see if they qualify for our help. If they do, we send them a digital survey they can complete at their own pace. We use branching logic, cartoons, videos, and plain language to make sure our users can complete the survey on their own,” Pavuluri said.

“Then, we automatically generate the bankruptcy petition and email it to our users. A lawyer reviews the petition with the user over Skype and emails him the final version to file with the court. Finally, we send our users a video of a mock 341 hearing so that they’re prepared to meet with their trustee.”"

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