Legal Profession Commons^™

Changing Every Wrong Door Into The Right One: Reforming Legal Services Intake To Empower Clients, Jabeen Adawi

Articles

It’s recognized that people affected by poverty often have numerous overlapping legal needs and despite the proliferation of legal services, they are unable to receive full assistance. When a person is faced with a legal emergency, rarely is there an equivalent to a hospital’s emergency room wherein they receive an immediate diagnosis for their needs and subsequent assistance. In this paper, I focus on the process a person goes through to find assistance and argue that it is a burdensome, and demoralizing task of navigating varying protocols, procedures, and individuals. While these systems are well intentioned from the lawyer’s perspective, …

Changing The Narrative Of Child Welfare, Matthew I. Fraidin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In child welfare, the difference we can make as lawyers for parents, children, and the state, and as judges, is to prevent children from entering foster care unnecessarily. And we can end a child’s stay in foster care as quickly as possible. To do that, we have to fight against a powerful narrative of child welfare and against the accepted “top-down” paradigm of legal services.

In this essay, Professor Fraidin suggests that we can achieve our goals of limiting entries to foster care and speeding exits from it by looking for the strengths of the people involved in our cases, …

Penalizing Poverty: Making Criminal Defendants Pay For Their Court-Appointed Counsel Through Recoupment And Contribution, Helen A. Anderson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Over thirty years ago the United States Supreme Court upheld an Oregon statute that allowed sentencing courts, with a number of important procedural safeguards, to impose on indigent criminal defendants the obligation to repay the cost of their court appointed attorneys. The practice of ordering recoupment or contribution (application fees or co-pays) of public defender attorney's fees is widespread, although collection rates are unsurprisingly low. Developments since the Court's decision in Fuller v. Oregon show that not only is recoupment not cost-effective, but it too easily becomes an aspect of punishment, rather than legitimate cost recovery. In a number of …

A Theory Of Access To Justice, Robert Rubinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article draws upon three observations: 1) the vast majority of disputes involve low-income litigants; 2) the vast majority of public and private resources of dispute resolution are allocated to disputes involving wealthy individuals and organizations; 3) any principled moral or ethical analysis demonstrates that the stakes are much higher in disputes involving low-income disputants than in disputes involving affluent individuals or organizations. Thus, the legal matters that attract a minute percentage of dispute resolution resources implicate issues of food and shelter, life and death. The Article describes a methodology - called "Resources of Dispute Resolution" or "RDR" - for …

A Short History Of Poverty Lawyers In The United States, Deborah J. Cantrell

Publications

No abstract provided.

Justice For Interests Of The Poor: The Problem Of Navigating The System Without Counsel, Deborah J. Cantrell

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Pro Bono Priority: The University Of Michigan's Approach To Instilling Public Service, Robert E. Precht, Suellyn Scarnecchia

Articles

The Pro Bono Priority is a two-part feature on pro bono service in Michigan law schools. in Crossing the Bar, the column of the Legal Education Committee, Dolores M. Coulter discusses how Michigan law schools measure up to the recommendations made in Learning to Serve, the report of the Commission on Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities from the Association of American Law Schools. In the Access to Justice column, Robert E. Precht and Suellyn Scarnecchia focus specifically on the University of MichiHgan's unique approach to pro bono service.

Poverty Lawyering In The Golden Age, Matthew Diller

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Brutal Need: Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement, 1960-1973 by Martha F. Davis

Building Community Among Diversity: Legal Services For Impoverished Immigrants, Robert L. Bach

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Part I of this Essay introduces the Immigrants' Legal Needs Study (ILNS), which provides most of the data for this Essay. Part II focuses on immigrants' access to legal assistance. It analyzes the problems and needs of recently arrived poor immigrants-both immigrants share with longer established poor residents as well as special needs related to immigrants' residency status. Part III addresses the present day demography of our urban communities, including the levels of new immigration. Parts IV and V detail the legal difficulties faced by poor immigrants, the ways they deal with these problems, and community responses to these needs. …

The Public Defender, Robert R. Kimball

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Public Defender by Lisa J. McIntyre

Poor People's Lawyers In Transition, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Poor People's Lawyers in Transition by Jack Katz

The Myth Of Sisyphus: Legal Services Efforts On Behalf Of The Poor, Lawrence E. Rothstein

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In Greek mythology there is a story about the tyrant, Sisyphus, who is condemned to suffer everlasting anguish. Eternally, he rolls a huge rock up the steep side of a mountain only to have it roll down again just as he reaches the top. Such is the plight in which the poor person finds himself when confronting the legal system. If the poor individual is able to overcome the massive obstacles placed between him and full, fair litigation of his case, he finds that the rules to be applied to the case are stacked against him. This situation is not …

Legal Aid--Lay Control And Organizational Complexity Render Oeo Legal Service Program Unacceptable To New York Court--In Re Community Action For Legal Services, Inc., Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

The Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and the New York City Council Against Poverty approved the organization and the OEO funding of three legal service corporations as part of a comprehensive program to provide legal assistance to New York City's poor. According to the plan, the first corporation, Community Action for Legal Services, Inc. (CALS), was to approve proposed plans for setting up and operating neighborhood law offices with OEO funds and then to supervise and coordinate the agencies that sought to put those plans into operation. These agencies, operating as delegates of CALS, and under subcontracts with it, were …