In yet another article on the problem of access to justice for the rural poor, Jamie Maclaren, executive director of Access Pro Bono BC, argues that online technologies might be the solution.
The idea to focus on e-services has some merit, I’m not going to dispute that. But, insofar as the idea involves matching work starved new lawyers with poor rural clients, it seems seriously flawed for at least two reasons.
First, new lawyers, who are over represented in the pool of under and un-employed lawyers, aren’t at a place in their careers where they can just set up shop and start working as sole practitioners. They don’t have the knowledge, experience or confidence required to provide the services that the clients need.
Second, online law practices involve working in isolation. This means that unlike more traditional arrangements where a lawyer rents an office in a space with other lawyers who can answer questions if they arise, the online business requires a service provider who’s able to work alone.
This suggests that while online law businesses might be viable for more seasoned members of the bar they are not likely to be used by brand new members of the profession.
Mr. Maclaren suggests that another solution to the access to justice problem would be to increase the number of lawyers. The theory that the problem is one of inadequate supply to meet demand is, according to Mr. Maclaren, “…at least mostly true”. I strongly disagree that increasing the number of lawyers would solve the access to justice problem.
According to the Report of the Delivery of Legal Services Task Force for the Benchers of the Law Society of British Columbia, released in December 2009:
“The median net economic worth of the lowest 20% of the Canadian population is $1,000, and that of the next quintile is $37,000. The amount of that wealth that is liquid enough to exchange for legal services is obviously less…For a great many of these people it will be irrelevant that there is a legal service provider charging $50 an hour as opposed to $250 an hour if it means selling the car they require for work, or not buying clothes and food for their children” (emphasis mine)
The demand isn’t for cheaper legal services it’s for highly discounted or free legal services. Recent grads like myself who pay $730 a month in student loans plus over $200 a month in law society fees can’t afford to work for little or nothing without going into poverty ourselves.
More poverty isn’t a solution to the poverty that’s already out there.
Anyone who still thinks that more lawyers is the answer might want to take a look to the US, where the market is indisputably flooded and access to justice is as big a problem now as it ever was.
Poor people don’t need cheaper legal services, they need heavily discounted or free legal services, which can’t be provided by debt strapped new lawyers. A fully funded legal aid system is the only solution.
The problem with the poor isn’t that they lack access to low-cost legal services. It’s that they’re f’ing poor!! That said…
Demand for lawyers among the rural poor can be solved by a government program employing legal aid lawyers. Since people are already willing to spend taxpayer money training new lawyers, it stands to reason that they should be more willing to cut out the ineffective government program and replace it with a better one.
In the U.S., we hear this all the time from sanctimonious law school deans who make a quarter million dollars annually off nondischargeable student debt. It drives me nuts.
Hi Matt: I agree that the problem is poverty overall. There’s just too much of it and more and more of it all the time. I also think that the problem is that many rich lawyers can’t grasp what it means to be poor. They just don’t seem to be able to understand that someone that’s making a small salary really doesn’t have the money to pay a lawyer – regardless of the lawyer’s rate. They seem to think that a lower (middle) class worker who has a family should be able to pay 40 or 50$ per hour to a new lawyer. These privileged lawyers from their privileged backgrounds come up with ideas that are way out of touch with reality for the poor people they’re supposedly trying to held. It drives me nuts too. Is that what you meant when you said “we hear this all the time from sanctimonious law school deans?”
I more meant that U.S. law school deans lament new lawyers seeking subsistence-level non-legal work rather than living in cardboard boxes to represent the poor, while they’re given government funding to be unproductive.
I seem to have made it to this blog a little bit late, as LSFFP stopped the blog as of yesterday. But for what it’s worth, here’s my quick response to LSFFP’s insightful comments from a few weeks ago.
The main point of my Slaw blog entry was that BC lawyers can do more to expand their markets and connect with “remote” under-served populations by adopting appropriate online technologies. I don’t think online technologies provide the singular solution to the crisis in access to justice. I also don’t think that lower market rates will do much to assist the poor to obtain access to justice, but rather that expanded legal aid and complementary pro bono legal services are critically needed to serve low- and modest-income people. I do think that reduced rate service– whether local or remote– can do a lot to open new middle and upper-middle class markets.
I understand the point that new lawyers are often not in an ideal place in their careers to set up shop and operate as sole practitioners, but I disagree that they don’t necessarily have the knowledge to serve clients well and make a good go of things. I set up shop as a very debt-strapped sole practitioner within several months of being called, and I was able to self-educate and develop the confidence in order to develop a solid, mostly middle-class client list based on my cheaper rates and entrepreneurial spirit. I probably got lucky in many ways, but I don’t think that new lawyers should sell themselves short when considering a solo foray out into the legal market. New lawyers are smart and adaptable, and those are very marketable attributes.
I don’t agree with LSFFP’s point that traditional bricks and mortar practice environments are necessarily more conducive to effective mentoring than online practice environments. I think that mentorship and collaboration is better enabled by the vast and immediate connections afforded by online social networks and the internet in general. My limited law firm experience taught me that “live” mentors (i.e. senior lawyers down the hall) are rarely as accessible and accommodating as a new lawyer would wish them to be. IMHO, and taking into account matters of client confidentiality, lawyers would do well to learn from software developers on how to exchange and build information and knowledge in instant and often exponential ways.
I take LSFFP’s point regarding the vast number of lawyers in the US and the persistent access to justice problem there. I don’t think that flooding the market with new lawyers is the answer to anything. But I do see an acute need for cheaper legal services as delivered by one type of legal service provider or another. The fiscal realities of graduating from law school and financing a law practice (it ain’t cheap, that’s for sure) do preclude many or most lawyers from reducing their rates to widely affordable levels. But so long as people are forced into the justice system and yet cannot afford basic legal services to facilitate early and positive resolutions, it is incumbent upon the legal profession, law schools and government to address the affordability gap and somehow permit new and existing legal service providers to provide cost-effective services to the lower and middle classes. I think that a marginal and strategic increase in the number of practicing lawyers, coupled with strategies to reduce the cost of legal practice and allow for more flexible and creative forms of service provision, would do much more good than harm.
In any case, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to LSFPP’s comments, and I lament the fact that the dialogue on these important issues stops here for this excellent blog.
Jamie
“But so long as people are forced into the justice system and yet cannot afford basic legal services to facilitate early and positive resolutions, it is incumbent upon the legal profession, law schools and government”. Which members of the profession have this responsibility? Let’s be specific here so as to ensure that we’re not unduly discriminating against any particular group. Here’s what i think: no one from the legal profession, law schools, or government is being asked to make the sacrifice except law students and new lawyers – the least powerful members of the three groups that you’re talking about. But that’s not even the biggest problem with this argument. When lawyers suggest that it is primarily our responsibility to ensure access to justice we let governments off the hook. What we say is “you know what, you’re right. we lawyers are primarily responsible to ensure that there’s access to justice. this isn’t about rights it’s about management of the profession.” When we view the problem from this perspective the issue stops being one of governments not providing the basic services that a person needs in order to be able to fully participate in the justice system and starts being one of a supposedly internally mismanaged and greedy profession. Then, we start to think about how to fix the profession instead of spending our time agitating the government and saying “without legal aid there never will be access to justice”, which is TRUE and hopefully less disputable after the release of the commission report on legal aid in BC. Meanwhile, ten, twenty years from now our rankings on the rule of law index will get worse and the entire profession will start to look sleazier because instead of banding together and saying “yes, legal aid is a right” we’ve splintered and have half of our members off chasing unicorns meanwhile a huge number of grads are drowning in the unemployment line with massive non dischargeable student debt.
“I think that a marginal and strategic increase in the number of practicing lawyers..” I’m not at all surprised that you think this, see above. “…coupled with strategies to reduce the cost of legal practice and allow for more flexible and creative forms of service provision…” could you please be more specific? What strategies to reduce the cost of legal practice are you envisioning? Look, I didn’t want to say this in my article though I probably should have, but if you’re talking about the online services I sincerely doubt that that’s going to help the poor. My brother is on assistance, as are many of his friends, and I can tell you right now that a lot of the poor people that I know don’t own a computer let alone know how to use one. I think it’s a good idea in theory that would work more for lawyers with some experience providing services at a lower rate to more middle class people. The idea that these services will be useful to the poor doesn’t seem realistic to me, kind of like when they sent those tractors to Africa (see, for ex: http://www.newint.org/features/1990/06/05/simply/).
Thanks for the response and for your kind words. I hope that you commit yourself and your organization to the brave and uncompromising promotion of legal aid.