Lack of access to justice is a big deal these days in the legal world. For criminal defendants, the 6th Amendment provides a right to counsel, but it says nothing about the quality of that counsel. There are lots of innocent poor people in prison as a consequence. Regular people in civil courts are almost on […]
A Legal Self Help Center Everywhere By 2020
A recent guest post on Richard Zorza’s wonderful Access To Justice blog endorsed a strategy for building a legal self help center in every jurisdiction in the country within the next five years. Talk about a social revolution! Let me get this out of the way: I love Richard Zorza. I’ve never met him, never even corresponded […]
Judge, Heal Thy Courts For Access To Justice
The NYU Law Review has a barn-burning speech from the chief judge of the state’s appellate bench, who sees the judiciary as the leader of the access to justice revolution (pdf). Judge Lippman is a tireless advocate of legal services for the poor. His work on reforming New York’s justice system is respected throughout the country. More Like This:If You’re A […]
The Future Of Legal Services
The future of legal services cannot be left to lawyers. With all due respect to the profession, it was always designed to serve the upper crust and its corporations, and that mentality is baked into the cake. With the exception of the poorest and most desperate civil and criminal defendants, the rest of us have […]
Is Access To Justice Different for Different Litigants?
Sometimes when a thing starts to fall apart, it does so gradually. No one recognizes the damage for what it is until the thing is in tatters. Or, people recognize that the thing is falling apart and are not fully aware of how to fix it. After all, it worked for a long time. In the latter case, they prop it up with […]
