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Fringe Inheriting: Probate Avoidance At Both Ends Of The Wealth Spectrum, Allison Anna Tait

Law Faculty Publications

The principal system in the United States for transferring wealth from one generation to the next - the probate system - is a historically and steadfastly public one. Probate is a set of public processes and a court system created to situate and facilitate wealth transfer, giving legal imprimatur to the distribution of family money. Nevertheless, while the probate system may be the central and most conventional system for transferring wealth, not all families and individuals avail themselves of the system. The broad swath of families who avail themselves of the services and certain benefits of the probate system are, …

End Of Life, Elder Abuse, And Guardianship: An Exploration Of New York’S Surrogate Decision-Making Framework, Tristan Sullivan-Wilson, Esq., Deirdre Lok, Esq., Joy Solomon, Esq.

Touro Law Review

The best end of life care is always that which aligns with the wishes and values of the incapacitated person. For individuals with the capacity to execute advance directives, these documents and conversations with appointed surrogates are the clearest way to make care values known. However, the time, access, and ability to engage in advance planning is not an opportunity equally afforded.For those without advance directives and now involved in a guardianship proceeding, the party petitioning or otherwise involved in the case should consider addressing end of life decision-making directly in the guardianship hearing when major medical decision-making power may …

America's Lawyerless Courts: Legal Scholars Work To Recommend Large-Scale Changes In Lawyerless Civil Courts, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, Jessica K. Steinberg, Alyx Mark

Faculty Scholarship

At approximately 9:00 on most weekday mornings, thousands of state civil courts open their doors and begin hearing cases. These cases involve hundreds of thousands of people acrossthe country. State civil courts are the core of America's civil justice system, whether measured by a raw number of cases or courts'impact on ordinary people's lives. These courts handle 98% of all civil matters filed each year – around 20 million cases.

Many people are pulled into civil court because they cannot pay their rent or debts. Many more come to court for help with intimate and family relationships, including those seeking …

The Field Of State Civil Courts, Anna E. Carpenter, Alyx Mark, Colleen F. Shanahan, Jessica K. Steinberg

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium Issue of the Columbia Law Review marks a moment of convergence and opportunity for an emerging field of legal scholarship focused on America’s state civil trial courts. Historically, legal scholarship has treated state civil courts as, at best, a mere footnote in conversations about civil law and procedure, federalism, and judicial behavior. But the status quo is shifting. As this Issue demonstrates, legal scholars are examining our most common civil courts as sites for understanding law, legal institutions, and how people experience civil justice. This engagement is essential for inquiries into how courts shape and respond to social …

The Institutional Mismatch Of State Civil Courts, Colleen F. Shanahan, Jessica K. Steinberg, Alyx Mark, Anna E. Carpenter

Faculty Scholarship

State civil courts are central institutions in American democracy. Though designed for dispute resolution, these courts function as emergency rooms for social needs in the face of the failure of the legislative and executive branches to disrupt or mitigate inequality. We reconsider national case data to analyze the presence of social needs in state civil cases. We then use original data from courtroom observation and interviews to theorize how state civil courts grapple with the mismatch between the social needs people bring to these courts and their institutional design. This institutional mismatch leads to two roles of state civil courts …

The Price Of Progress: Estimating The Funding Needed To Close The Justice Gap, E. H. Geiger

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article addresses the "Justice Gap," a disparity in legal services between low-income individuals and their wealthier counterparts, leading to unfair legal outcomes. It argues that insufficient funding for legal aid exacerbates this issue and calls for increased federal funding to ensure equal access to justice, emphasizing that the costs are manageable and necessary to prevent broader societal and economic consequences.

Praxis And Paradox: Inside The Black Box Of Eviction Court, Lauren Sudeall, Daniel Pasciuti

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the American legal system, we typically conceive of legal disputes as governed by specific rules and procedures, resolved in a formalized court setting, with lawyers shepherding both parties through an adversarial process involving the introduction of evidence and burdens of proof. The often-highlighted exception to this understanding is the mass, assembly-line processing of cases, whether civil or criminal, in large, urban, lower-level courts. The gap left unfilled by either of these two narratives is how “court” functions for the average unrepresented litigant in smaller and nonurban jurisdictions across the United States.

For many tenants facing eviction, elements of the …

Assessing China’S Environmental Ngo Public Interest Litigation Against The U.S. Citizen Suit Model, Huishihan Wang

Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation introduces the U.S. and China’s environmental governance evolution, the background of their private enforcement provisions, including each country’s environmental legislative, administrative, and judicial development before establishing private enforcement. After the introduction, the second section examines the U.S. environmental citizen suits’ origin, environmental movements during the 1960s and 1970s, and pioneer ENGOs’ legal experiences. Statutory provisions are reviewed in various aspects in order to fully present this significant U.S. private enforcement measure. The third section analyzes the trajectory of Chinese ENGO EPIL development, including the provisions and typical actions according to several scattered provisions. Section four compares the theoretical …

A Firm Pillar Of Local Justice: The Failures Of The New York Town And Village Justice Courts Supporting Statewide Adoption Of The District Court Model, Noah Sexton

Journal of Law and Policy

Town and village justice courts have been the center of municipal law, both civil and criminal, since the mid-nineteenth century. However, in the modern world, they have become corrupt, poorly managed institutions, creating issues involving procedural integrity and civil rights. In order to remedy these failures and modernize the New York State Unified Court System, state legislators must look to the district court model as it currently exists in Nassau and Eastern Suffolk Counties. The district court model offers several benefits, including the imposition of educational and experiential requirements for judges, the creation of internal and external oversight institutions, the …

Session 1: Access To Legal Services - The Role Of Innovation And Technology, Steven Bender, Stacy Butler, Anna Carpenter, Michael Cherry, Sands Mckinley, Kimball Dean Parker, Miguel Willis

SITIE Symposiums

This expert panel is addressing access to justice problems. People without access to lawyers and legal services suffer in many ways not limited to divorce, domestic violence, and educational roadblocks. This panel will ask what lawyers can do to help, in what ways can technology help or replace lawyers in the delivery of legal and non-legal services. It will also explore different legal services being offered by individuals who do not have a JD, online firms, and developing technology in a law firm owed subsidiary. There are six panelists who are broken into two categories: (1) the innovation and delivery …

Talking Back In Court, M. Eve Hanan

Washington Law Review

People charged with crimes often speak directly to the judge presiding over their case. Yet, what can be seen in courtrooms across the U.S. is that defendants rarely “talk back” in court, meaning that they rarely challenge authority’s view of the law, the crime, the defendant, the court’s procedure, or the fairness of the proposed sentence.

With few exceptions, legal scholars have treated the occasions when defendants speak directly to the court as a problem to be solved by appointing more lawyers and better lawyers. While effective representation is crucial, this Article starts from the premise that defendants have important …

Equal Injustice For All: High Quality Self-Representation Does Not Ensure A Matter Is “Fairly Heard”, Jona Goldschmidt

Seattle University Law Review Online

Self-represented litigants (SRLs) are generally less successful in court than parties with legal representation. Some access-to-justice programs view self-representation as a skill that can be taught and will lead to more success in case outcomes, but Jona Goldschmidt pushes back against this assumption. Goldschmidt argues that even high functioning, educated, and computer savvy SRLs are at a disadvantage in the courtroom when courts strictly enforce rules and do not offer reasonable accommodations.

In this Article, Goldschmidt evaluates three cases that illustrate expert SRLs’ challenges in the courtroom, and he argues that ridged rule enforcement and failure to accommodate lead to …

Law School News: The Honorable Edward C. Clifton: Doctor Of Laws, Honoris Causa 05-17-2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Judges And The Deregulation Of The Lawyer's Monopoly, Jessica Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, Alyx Mark

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In a revolutionary moment for the legal profession, the deregulation of legal services is taking hold in many parts of the country. Utah and Arizona, for instance, are experimenting with new regulations that permit nonlawyer advocates to play an active role in assisting citizens who may not otherwise have access to legal services. In addition, amendments to the Rules of Professional Conduct in both states, as well as those being contemplated in California, now allow nonlawyers to have a partnership stake in law firms, which may dramatically change the way capital for the delivery of legal services is raised as …

An Evaluation Framework For Allied Legal Professional Programs: Assessing Improvements In Access To Justice, Andrea L. Miller, Paula Hannaford-Agor, Kathryn Genthon

Faculty Publications

The American legal system has a civil access-to-justice gap, wherein many people with civil legal issues are unable to obtain legal assistance. People with civil legal issues who cannot afford an attorney frequently must proceed through the legal system on their own. As the number of Self-Represented Litigants (SRLs) grows, several jurisdictions have investigated the creation of an additional tier of legal service providers, who can give limited legal assistance at a lower price than attorneys. For the purposes of this report, we will refer to these service providers as Allied Legal Professionals (ALPs). ALP programs can involve a wide …

Remote Court: Principles For Virtual Proceedings During The Covid-19 Pandemic And Beyond, Alicia L. Bannon, Douglas Keith

Northwestern University Law Review

Across the country, courts at every level have relied on remote technology to adapt the justice system to a once-a-century global pandemic. This Essay describes and assesses this unprecedented journey into virtual justice, paying particular attention to eviction proceedings. While many judges have touted remote court as a revolutionary innovation, the reality is more complex. Remote court has brought substantial time savings and convenience to those who are able to access and use the required technology, but it has also posed hurdles to individuals on the other side of the digital divide, particularly self-represented litigants. The remote court experience has …

Increasing Substantive Fairness And Mitigating Social Costs In Eviction Proceedings: Instituting A Civil Right To Counsel For Indigent Tenants In Pennsylvania, Robin M. White

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The U.S. Constitution provides criminal defendants the right to a court-appointed attorney but gives no similar protection to civil litigants. Although federal law does not supply any categorical rights to counsel for civil litigants, all 50 states have instituted the right in at least one category of civil law that substantially impacts individuals’ rights. Since 2017, several U.S. cities have enacted such a right for tenants facing eviction. In so doing, these cities responded to American families’ increasing rent burden, the recent publication of nationwide eviction data, the sociological research concerning the impact of eviction, and the lack of procedural …

What Is A “Case”?, Lynn M. Mather

Journal Articles

This article interrogates the concept of a “case” in court, in an effort to clarify underlying concerns in debates over whether there is “too much” or “too little” litigation. One perspective on litigation takes a bottom-up view, examining the considerations and motives of disputing parties who file civil claims. This perspective includes theories about litigation and social structure, economics, dispute transformation, political participation, and psychology. An alternative top-down view examines litigation from the perspective of government, including its interest in dispute resolution, social control, and institutional capacities of courts. The article reviews and critiques existing literature on these perspectives and …

Using Random Assignment To Measure Court Accessibility For Low-Income Divorce Seekers, James D. Greiner, Ellen L. Degnan, Thomas Ferriss, Roseanna Sommers

Articles

We conducted a field experiment in which 311 low-income individuals seeking a divorce were randomly assigned to receive access to a pro bono lawyer (versus minimal help) to assist with filing for divorce. Examining court records, we found that assignment to an attorney made a large difference in whether participants filed for and obtained a divorce. Three years after randomization, 46% of the treated group had terminated their marriages in the proper legal venue, compared to 9% of the control group. Among “compliers”—participants who obtained representation only if assigned to receive it—those with lawyers were far more likely to file …

The Role Of Sharia Banking Notaries In The Development Of Sharia Economic Law In The Digital Era, Rofah Setyowati, Bagas Heradhyaksa, Maskur Rosyid

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Notary has a strategic position in making Islamic banking contracts. This is because the Notary is responsible for the correctness of the contract construction to fulfill the terms of the agreement, as well as sharia principles. This study is intended to analyze the legal consequences that arise in the relationship between the Notary profession and the Islamic banking industry. It is important to find opportunities and challenges of Notaries in supporting the development of Islamic economics in Indonesia. This study uses a philosophical, juridical and empirical approach. The results of the analysis show that the need for a notary who …

There Is No Justice When Low And Modest-Income D.C. Residents Are Forced To Represent Themselves In Civil Cases, Sheldon Krantz

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

After spending more than twenty years as a white-collar criminal defense lawyer at DLA Piper and prior to that serving as a federal prosecutor, law professor, and law school dean, I had the opportunity to help develop and then share responsibility for directing the non-profit D.C. Affordable Law Firm (“DCALF”). 135 I learned from this experience that lawyers are rarely available for most of the low- and modest income District of Columbia (“D.C.”) residents who find themselves embroiled in civil matters in D.C. Superior Court on matters greatly impacting their lives. They become, as a result, self-represented litigants (“SRLs”) who …

Avoiding The Great Divide: Assuring Court Technology Lightens The Load Of Low-Income Litigants Post-Covid-19, Katherine L.W. Norton

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Simultaneity Puzzle: Lawyers Working At Multiple Law Firms, Paul R. Tremblay

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents.

Judges And The Deregulation Of The Lawyer's Monopoly, Jessica Steinberg, Anna Carpenter, Colleen Shanahan, Alyx Mark

Faculty Articles

In a revolutionary moment for the legal profession, the deregulation of legal services is taking hold in many parts of the country. Utah and Arizona, for instance, are experimenting with new regulations that permit nonlawyer advocates to play an active role in assisting citizens who may not otherwise have access to legal services. In addition, amendments to the Rules of Professional Conduct in both states, as well as those being contemplated in California, now allow nonlawyers to have a partnership stake in law firms, which may dramatically change the way capital for the delivery of legal services is raised as …

Seeing Those We’Ve Rendered Invisible – A Clarion Call For Criminal Justice, Stephen E. Henderson, Jordan Thomas

Faculty Articles

Jonathan Rapping, Gideon’s Promise: A Public Defender Movement to Transform Criminal Justice (Beacon Press 2020) In this brief review, we situate Rapping’s work among those demanding criminal justice reform, praise an unrelated bonus, and propose a friendly amendment to nudge his vision over the finish line of justice. It will not be enough to provide newly enabled and supported public defenders to those our systems consider indigent. We ought to provide them to us all.

Ordinary Clients, Overreaching Lawyers, And The Failure To Implement Adequate Client Protection Measures, Leslie C. Levin

Faculty Articles and Papers

Every year, thousands of individual clients are victimized by overreaching lawyers who overcharge clients, refuse to return unearned fees, or steal their money. For more than forty years, the American Bar Association (ABA) has considered, and often proposed, client protection measures aimed at protecting clients from overreaching lawyers. These measures include requirements that lawyers use written fee agreements in their dealings with clients and rules relating to fee arbitration, client protection funds, insurance payee notification, and random audits of trust accounts. This Article examines what happened to these ABA recommendations when the states considered them and assesses the current state …

Pleadings In A Pandemic: The Role, Regulation, And Redesign Of Eviction Court Documents, Daniel W. Bernal

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

2021: How Gender And Race Affect Justice Now - Final Report, Justice Sheryl Gordon Mccloud, Dana Raigrodski, Sierra Rotakhina, Kelley Amburgey-Richardson

Books

In 1989, the Washington Supreme Court’s Task Force on Gender and Justice in the Courts produced a groundbreaking report on the impact of gender on selected areas of the law. It concluded that gender did affect the availability of justice. We – the Washington State Supreme Court Gender and Justice Commission – are a product of that report and its recommendations. Now, in 2021, we have completed our follow-up study.

Our legal and social science research, our data collection, and our independent pilot projects all led us to the same frustrating conclusion about the effect of gender in Washington State …

An Evaluation And Performance Measure Framework For Online Dispute Resolution Programs: Assessing Improvements In Access To Justice, Andrea L. Miller, Paula Hannaford-Agor, Kathryn Genthon

Faculty Publications

One type of programming designed to improve access to justice for civil litigants is online dispute resolution (ODR). ODR generally consists of an internet-based software platform on which litigants can resolve legal problems, including negotiating settlements or exchanging information to narrow the factual and legal issues in a formal court hearing. ODR programs were first developed by online commercial businesses such as PayPal, eBay, and Amazon to resolve disputes more effectively between buyers and sellers, but they are still a relatively new innovation in courts, with most programs launching within the past three years.

ODR programs are intended to increase …