Law Commons^™

Dream Big And Lay The Groundwork: How Rhode Island Can Improve Access To Civil Justice For Self- Represented Litigants, Amanda Rotimi

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Counting The Cost Of Enlarging The Role Of Adr In Civil Justice, Dorcas Quek Anderson

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Access to civil justice in many countries has been plagued by the common challenges of the high cost of litigation, inequality in parties’ financial resources, differing risk appetites and limited judicial resources. Singapore, a common law jurisdiction, recently implemented radical changes to its civil justice regime with effect from 1 April 2022 in order to ensure affordability and timeliness of the civil justice process. As in the United Kingdom, these civil justice reforms are premised on the proportionality principle: they seek to achieve procedure that is proportionate to the claim value and the means of the parties, without unduly compromising …

The Democratic (Il)Legitimacy Of Assembly-Line Litigation, Jessica K. Steinberg, Colleen F. Shanahan, Anna E. Carpenter, Alyx Mark

Faculty Scholarship

Millions of debt cases are filed in the civil courts every year. In debt actions, asymmetrical representation is the norm, with the plaintiff almost always represented by counsel and the defendant very rarely so. A number of jurisdictions report that up to ninety-nine percent of defendants in debt cases appear pro se — a figure that calls into question the basic legitimacy of these proceedings.

Professor Daniel Wilf-Townsend’s central contribution to the literature on debt collection, and state civil justice more broadly, is to demonstrate through sophisticated empirics what has long been anecdotally reported: that a cluster of corporate plaintiffs …

Modernizing Capacity Doctrine, Lisa V. Martin

Faculty Publications

Federal capacity doctrine—or the rules establishing whether and how children’s civil litigation proceeds—has largely remained the same for more than a century. It continues to presume that all children are incapable of directing their own cases, and that adults must litigate on children’s behalf. But since that time, our understanding of children, and of adolescents in particular, has significantly evolved. This Article contends that it is well beyond time to modernize the capacity doctrine to better account for the capabilities of adolescents and support their transition to adulthood.

Benevolent Exclusion, Anna Offit

Washington Law Review

The American jury system holds the promise of bringing common sense ideas about justice to the enforcement of the law. But its democratizing effect cannot be realized if a segment of the population faces systematic exclusion based on income or wealth. The problem of unequal access to jury service based on socio-economic disparities is a longstanding yet under-studied problem—and one which the uneven fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated. Like race- and sex-based jury discrimination during the peremptory challenge phase of jury selection, the routine dismissal of citizens who face economic hardship excludes not only people but also the …

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 …

When Accessing Justice Requires Absence From The Courthouse: Utah’S Online Dispute Resolution Program And The Impact It Will Have On Pro Se Litigants, Julianne Dardanes

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

According to the 2017 Justice Gap Report conducted by Congress’s non-profit Legal Services Corporation (LSC), eighty-six percent of civil legal issues involving low-income Americans received scant or no legal assistance. The number of unrepresented (“pro se”) litigants continues to rise, with low-income Americans constituting a significant portion of this population. Due to the inefficiency of socioeconomically challenged litigants appearing pro se, this article proposes implementing Utah’s court-mandated Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) program as a solution nation-wide. Utah’s ODR program for small claims is revolutionary because it is the first ODR system able to handle an entire dispute instead of only …

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 …

Why Do The Poor Not Have A Constitutional Right To File Civil Claims In Court Under Their First Amendment Right To Petition The Government For A Redress Of Grievances?, Henry Rose

Seattle University Law Review

Since 1963, the United States Supreme Court has recognized a constitutional right for American groups, organizations, and persons to pursue civil litigation under the First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances. However, in three cases involving poor plaintiffs decided by the Supreme Court in the early 1970s—Boddie v. Connecticut,2 United States v. Kras,3 and Ortwein v. Schwab4—the Supreme Court rejected arguments that all persons have a constitutional right to access courts to pursue their civil legal claims.5 In the latter two cases, Kras and Ortwein, the Supreme Court concluded that poor persons were properly barred from …

Public And Private Intermingled: Changes In The Family And Property Laws Of Argentina, Julieta Marotta, Agustín Parise

Journal of Civil Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Access To Justice: Theory And Practice From A Comparative Perspective, Colin Crawford, Daniel Bonilla Maldonado

Publications

The papers gathered in this volume analyze access to justice in Latin America, Europe, and North America from a philosophical, legal, and sociological perspective. In these three regions of the world, as in the rest of the globe, liberal democracies face a troubling gap between the normative and the descriptive: the access to justice promises made by the legal and political system are not fully realized in practice. The studies collected here, therefore, share two baseline assumptions. First, the right of access to justice is fundamental in a liberal state. Access to justice ensures that citizens are able to defend …

Why Consumer Defendants Lump It, Emily S. Taylor Poppe

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Licensing Paralegals To Practice Law: A Path Toward Bridging The Justice Gap In Minnesota, Conner Suddick

Departmental Honors Projects

There are few legal avenues for low-income and other marginalized groups in the United States to seek civil justice. A lack of legal assistance in civil issues can be detrimental to a person’s health and wellbeing. Given this reality, the legal profession must broaden its capacity to serve these needs, and one path is to embrace the aid of paralegals. In 2016, the legal community of Minnesota had conversations about whether the state should provide limited licenses to paralegals. To study models from across the country, the Minnesota State Bar Association (MSBA) formed the Alternative Legal Models Task Force. In …

Integrating The Access To Justice Movement, Lauren Sudeall

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Last fall, advocates of social change came together at the A2J Summit at Fordham University School of Law and discussed how to galvanize a national access to justice movement - who would it include, and what would or should it attempt to achieve? One important preliminary question we tackled was how such a movement would define "justice," and whether it would apply only to the civil justice system. Although the phrase "access to justice" is not exclusively civil in nature, more often than not it is taken to have that connotation. Lost in the interpretation is an opportunity to engage …

Simplified Courts Can't Solve Inequality, Colleen F. Shanahan, Anna E. Carpenter

Faculty Scholarship

State civil courts struggle to handle the volume of cases before them. Litigants in these courts, most of whom are unrepresented, struggle to navigate the courts to solve their problems. This access-to-justice crisis has led to a range of reform efforts and solutions. One type of reform, court simplification, strives to reduce the complexity of procedures and information used by courts to help unrepresented litigants navigate the judicial system. These reforms mitigate but do not solve the symptoms of the larger underlying problem: state civil courts are struggling because they have been stuck with legal cases that arise from the …

A Comparative Discussion Of Who Pays For Document Discovery In Australia, Canada, Guernsey (Channel Islands), And Singapore And Its Effect On Access To Justice, Gordon Mckee, Anne Glover, Francis Rouleau

Vanderbilt Law Review

symposium organized by the Vanderbilt Law Review to discuss the future of discovery in the United States.' More specifically, the topic for discussion was an ongoing debate in the United States about proposals by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform and Lawyers for Civil Justice to adopt a "requestor-pays" discovery rule. In a requestor-pays system, each party pays for the discovery it seeks, which includes the costs of discovery belonging to the other parties to the litigation. It is based on the theory that a requestor-pays rule will encourage each party to manage its own discovery expenses and tailor …

Access To Justice For Four Billion: Urban And Environmental Options And Challenges, Colin Crawford

Publications

This Article proceeds in five parts. Part I considers four prominent theories on the meaning of "access to justice." To be sure, the lines and divisions between these positions are in practice less rigid than this text will at times suggest. Nonetheless, the four approaches are sufficiently different from one another to justify a critical evaluation. Part I therefore undertakes to provide such an evaluation of these different proposals. In this, Part I seeks to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the different proposals with respect to the search for answers to some of the questions related to what "access …

The World Is Round: Why We Must Assure Equal Access To Civil Justice, Jon D. Levy

Maine Law Review

In 1972, the astronauts of Apollo 17, NASA’s final manned-mission to the Moon, took a photograph of the entire hemisphere of Earth. The photograph shows the continents of Africa and Antarctica in hues of red and brown, surrounded by the vibrant blue oceans and topped by swirling white clouds. It has become an iconic image. Studying the Earth from afar, Eugene Cernan, Apollo 17’s commander, reported to the Houston command center with just a touch of irony: “We’re not the first to discover this, but we’d like to confirm, from the crew of Apollo 17, that the world is round.” …

How Ontarians Experience The Law: An Examination On Incidence Rate, Seriousness And Response To Legal Problems, Matthew Dylag

LLM Theses

Access to civil justice is a conceptual framework that, at its most basic, claims all people are entitled to have their legal disputes resolved fairly. However, it is currently understood that these ideals are not reflected in the day-to-day realities of ordinary people. Though scholarship has examined ways in which to better allow for meaningful access to civil justice, there is still a need for further quantitative research especially from the Canadian perspective. This paper provides an empirical foundation to this discussion by examining the 2014 Cost of Justice project survey. Specifically, it examines the incidence rate of civil legal …

Lawyerless Dispute Resolution: Rethinking A Paradigm, Jean R. Sternlight

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article suggests that our failure to focus on the possible need for representation in mediation and arbitration is fundamentally misguided. Although legal representation is no doubt more important in some contexts than others, it is wrong to make the binary assumption that legal representation is always more important in litigation than in ADR processes; legal representation may often be critically important in ADR processes. Because many disputes will be finally resolved in ADR and because legal representation can be equally or even more important in ADR than in litigation, we need to focus simultaneously on improving representation in both …

Examining The Real Demand For Legal Services, Herbert M. Kritzer

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Legal needs are real, but can also be virtually open-ended. Studies tell us that 85% of the civil legal needs of low income persons are currently not being met but we have no idea as to what portion of that 85% legal assistance would meaningfully help to resolve those needs, or how the cost of providing that assistance compares to the benefit that would be generated. This article examines extant studies of legal needs, and concludes that there is a need for baseline data to enable us to assess the degree of legal need that takes into account the range …

Introduction: 2008 Aba Section Of Litigation Access To Justice Symposium, Robert L. Rothman

Fordham Urban Law Journal

The 2008 ABA Section of Litigation conducted a symposium designed to explore the challenges inherent in creation of a civil right to counsel and to generate critical though, dialogue, and scholarship on the subject.

Higher Demand, Lower Supply? A Comparative Assessment Of The Legal Resource Landscape For Ordinary Americans, Gillian K. Hadfield

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Systematic efforts to assess the legal landscape for the ordinary citizen - what legal services cost and what fraction of that cost is for real value - have been few and far between. Most studies focus instead on the performance of the legal system for corporate clients or on the delivery of legal services to the poor as a form of charity or welfare assistance. This article reviews and compares the few existing legal needs studies and looks for the macro indicators of the extent to which resources across the economy as a whole are devoted to providing legal inputs …

Nothing For Something? Denying Legal Assistance To Those Compelled To Participate In Adr Proceedings, Stephan Landsman

Fordham Urban Law Journal

The traditional view of the courts in their handling of unrepresented litigants has been that those who proceed pro se must look out for themselves and that there is no constitutional right to receive personal instruction from the trial judge on courtroom procedure. The opposing view, which has received increasing support, is that courts have a duty to ensure that pro se litigants do not lose their right to a hearing on the merits of their claim due to ignorance of technical procedural requirements. This Article explores the treatment of unrepresented litigants in ADR (alternative dispute resolution) settings, contends that …

If We Don't Get Civil Gideon: Trying To Make The Best Of The Civil-Justice Market, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article considers what market-oriented or market-regulation approaches might be most practical and helpful in trying to satisfy unmet civil legal-service needs and how much it appears that such approaches may be able to succeed in doing so.

Setting An Agenda For The Future Delivery Of Legal Services To The Poor In Maryland, Michael A. Millemann

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Diversifying The Delivery Of Legal Services To The Poor By Adding A Reduced Fee Private Attorney Component To The Predominantly Staff Model, Including Through A Judicare Program, Michael A. Millemann

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Maryland Legal Services Corporation: Promoting Equal Access To Justice, Robert J. Rhudy

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Legal Services: Meeting New Challenges With Delivery Systems That Promise Lasting Impact For Maryland's Poor, Hannah E. M. Lieberman

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Technology For Justice Customers: Bridging The Digital Divide Facing Self-Represented Litigants, Rondald W. Staudt

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.