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Florida Bar Association Gives Young Adults a Legal Heads-Up

Last year, the Florida Bar launched a website called #JustAdulting to make relevant legal information easy to access for people who are just turning 18. Now the association is bringing the idea to Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store.

The legal system can seem confusing or often impenetrable to someone without any experience with it—especially someone just barely considered an adult by law.

How do you get them up to speed? If you’re the Florida Bar, you launch a hashtag, a website, and an app. The platform #JustAdulting, a “legal survival guide” that’s intended to better explain the way people’s legal responsibilities change when they turn 18, launched last year, but last week, the organization launched mobile apps for iOS and Android, making it easy to research things on the go.

“When you turn 18, it’s more than just another birthday; there are rights and responsibilities that change as well,” Florida Bar President William J. Schifino Jr. noted in a news release.

The platform is designed to make it easy to research important laws particularly relevant to young adults. Those include laws related to alcohol consumption, driving, cyber-harassment, cars, jury duty, landlord-tenant issues, credit, and voting, among others.

Sheri Hazeltine, the head of the Florida Bar’s Law Related Education Committee, notes that the goal of the apps is to make this information easy to access and act upon.

“We will be running ads on social media throughout the spring to reach more students so that they can better understand the legal pitfalls and how to avoid them,” Hazeltine said. “For instance, it’s illegal to have an open alcoholic drink in a moving car. Many people, especially young adults, don’t realize that applies to the passenger, too.”

For those without quick access to a phone or who want to approach the information in a different way, the Florida Bar also offers this information as infographics and PDFs on its website.

(YouTube screenshot)

Ernie Smith

By Ernie Smith

Ernie Smith is a former senior editor for Associations Now. MORE

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