lawyers
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A Chance for Justice
I have written a good deal about access to justice and the related issue of self-represented litigants. These problems are very difficult; I doubt that any quick solutions can be found for them, and it doesn’t help that, as I wrote here, the complexities that must be dealt with are often forgotten. These problems are Continue reading
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In Cautious Praise of Rhetoric
Rhetoric―the art of packaging one’s arguments so as to make them more attractive―has a bad name. It is associated with deceit at worst, and meaninglessness at best. It is seen as a distraction. Why should we care about the way arguments are packaged―surely what really matters is their substance? A student put something like this Continue reading
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Legal Self-Services, Part Deux
Just a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the impact of a “self-service mentality” on the legal profession. This mentality, I suggested, is part of what explains the surge in self-representation. Josh Blackman, of South Texas College of Law, says something similar in a blog post, but his perspective is different and more optimistic. Prof. Blackman points Continue reading
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Legal Self-Services
Jim Gardner, of SUNY Buffalo, has an interesting post at The Faculty Lounge, arguing that [t]he capacity to acquire information, shop, travel, and do almost anything without human intermediation is conceived as a right, or at least a new baseline norm. Insistence upon the necessity of human interaction as a condition for completing a transaction Continue reading
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Don’t Try This at Home
I had missed this story when it came out, but better late than never. The CBC reports on the work of a Windsor Law professor, Julie Macfarlane, according to whose estimation “up to 80 per cent of people in family court and 60 per cent in civil cases represent themselves.” This is is, as she says, Continue reading
Double Aspect 