Rebooting Justice

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Benjamin H. Barton. Rebooting Justice

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1. Introduction

Part I = The Problem

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Where the stakes are lower or the issues are simpler, Americans need simpler, cheaper alternatives to giving everyone a free lawyer. The good news is that there are a bevy of options, and many of them are becoming available just in time. In particular, new technologies and approaches to dispute resolution offer us the opportunity to streamline and simplify, to the benefit of everyone (except possibly lawyers). For many simple civil and even minor criminal cases, we could reform the process to let technology do the work, funneling parties through stepped, online dispute resolution starting at computerized mediation, passing through human, non-lawyer mediation, and proceeding into our current system only after making every effort to end the case cheaply and quickly.

Legal services organizations can ration free lawyers for the fraction of cases that are the most complex or for the clients least equipped to handle even simplified procedures, such as the mentally ill or the illiterate. Law schools could offer shorter, cheaper ways to qualify as a lawyer. Licensing rules could let trained paralegals, social workers, and accountants handle routine, specialized work just as physician assistants and nurse practitioners do. We could simplify court procedures and rules of evidence and ask clerks and judges to assist pro se litigants and do more of the work themselves so they rely on the parties’ lawyers less.

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