Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Selected Works

2016

Access to justice

Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Law

Access To Justice And Small Claims Courts: Supporting Latin American Civil Reforms Through Empirical Research In Los Angeles County, California, Ricardo Lillo Nov 2016

Access To Justice And Small Claims Courts: Supporting Latin American Civil Reforms Through Empirical Research In Los Angeles County, California, Ricardo Lillo

Ricardo Lillo

The purpose of this article is to provide an analysis on the use of Small Claims Courts as a mechanism to improve access to justice in order to support the ongoing reform movement in Latin-American countries in civil matters. In this region, this essential information is intended to be used by policymakers to help judiciaries to confront several barriers that currently face common citizens: lack of information, high economic cost of the judicial process and obtaining legal representation, corruption, extreme formalism, delays, and even the geographical location of the courts. The experience on the implementation of the Small Claims Courts …

Go to article

Educating Main Street Lawyers, Luz E. Herrera Sep 2016

Educating Main Street Lawyers, Luz E. Herrera

Luz Herrera

Discussion about the value of a law degree has focused on the financial success of lawyers. Both defenders and critics of the existing legal education model largely ignore the implications that the cost of legal education and high lawyer fees have on access to justice. While a lawyer’s ability to make a decent living must be addressed when determining the value of a legal education, we fail to take into account the fact that there are millions of individuals in the U.S. who cannot find a lawyer to represent them when they need one. For advocates who believe that our …

Go to article

Personal Plight Legal Practice And Tomorrow's Lawyers, Noel Semple Sep 2016

Personal Plight Legal Practice And Tomorrow's Lawyers, Noel Semple

Noel Semple

Commentators have predicted that machine intelligence and off-shoring will steadily undermine demand for lawyers in North America and Europe. This essay argues that this prediction is not equally valid for all types of legal practice. Personal plight practice — in which lawyers help individuals and small businesses involved in legal disputes — is largely sheltered from computerization and off-shoring. The article calls for the profession and legal educators to open doors between tomorrow’s lawyers and personal plight legal practice. Doing so will not only address the economic insecurity confronting tomorrow’s lawyers, but also enhance access to justice.

Go to article

Silencing Gideon's Trumpet: The Plight Of The Indigent Prisoner, Allison I. Connelly Jul 2016

Silencing Gideon's Trumpet: The Plight Of The Indigent Prisoner, Allison I. Connelly

Allison Connelly

In this newsletter article, Professor Connelly discusses the difficulties faced by indigent prisoners in gaining access to the justice system.

Go to article

Law School Based Incubators And Access To Justice – Perspectives From Deans, Patricia E. Salkin, Ellen Suni, Niels Schaumann, Mary Lu Bilek Apr 2016

Law School Based Incubators And Access To Justice – Perspectives From Deans, Patricia E. Salkin, Ellen Suni, Niels Schaumann, Mary Lu Bilek

Patricia E. Salkin

At the end of February 2015, law professors, law deans, incubator staff and attorneys, and self-selected others gathered at California Western School of Law for the Second Annual Conference on Law School Incubators and Residency Programs. The incubators that are the subject of this article tend to focus on transition to law practice and access to justice, and some are also working to incorporate technology for the practice of law as a means of enhancing access to justice. As more law schools decide to host, sponsor or offer an incubator, and following our panel discussion at the February 2015 incubator …

Go to article

Life In The Law-Thick World: The Legal Resource Landscape For Ordinary Americans, Gillian K. Hadfield, Jamie Heine Dec 2015

Life In The Law-Thick World: The Legal Resource Landscape For Ordinary Americans, Gillian K. Hadfield, Jamie Heine

Gillian K Hadfield

Most advanced democracies are thick with law and regulation, rules that structure almost all social and economic relationships. Yet ordinary Americans, unlike their peers in other advanced systems, face this law-thick landscape with relatively few legal resources at their disposal. In this chapter, an updated version of Hadfield Higher Demand Lower Supply? A Comparative Assessment of the Legal Resource Landscape for Ordinary Americans (2009), we document what little data exists on the performance of legal markets for non-corporate clients in the U.S. Our results suggest that while the U.S. has nearly twice as many lawyers as comparable countries on a …

Go to article