Felicity Conrad - Maintain the Social Equlibrium

On episode five of the Superpowers podcast, Bill and Chris look to uncover Felicity Conrad’s superpower, and how she’s used it to redefine the meaning of pro bono legal counsel. As the CEO of Paladin, Felicity is blazing the trail for the emerging justice technology industry. The idea for Paladin came to Felicity while studying abroad in East Africa as an undergrad. While there, “I realized I’m this extraordinarily privileged person and I felt very deeply that it was my responsibility to give back and be a net positive person.” Instead of rolling in guilt, she used her superpower – empathy - to do something and find purpose. As Felicity told Bill and Chris, her life’s mission statement is “to make the world a more just place.” Every decision she’s made in her career has been in pursuit of that goal. As a young graduate of NYU Law School, Felicity took her first pro bono case representing a Colombian politician who sought refuge in the US from a narco-terrorist group and was facing deportation. “He couldn’t afford a lawyer,” she told Bill and Chris. “If he was deported, he would’ve been killed… We argued his case and at the end, the judge granted him asylum - and it’s just this incredible feeling.” With that emotion came questions. “How can you help scale that feeling? There are so many people out there who lack access to justice, 5.1 billion people [globally] lack access to justice.” She created Paladin to serve the bottom half of the legal industry. “It’s over $200 an hour on average for a lawyer in America. That doesn’t work for most people,” Felicity told Bill and Chris. “So, we’re focused on building tech products to serve the really underserved sections of the population…we built the first pro-bono platform.” Paladin’s SaaS-enabled marketplace lets Felicity connect people in need of justice with talented lawyers and organizations like the ACLU to close the massive justice global justice gap. With Paladin, Felicity told Bill and Chris, “we want to actually change the world.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices