About a decade ago, one of the huge issues in law was that there are huge underserved communities who needed legal help but were unable to afford a lawyer. Whether they couldn’t afford legal counsel or simply preferred to spend their scarce resources elsewhere was one issue, but the fact remained that we’ve built a society of legal landmines that few non-lawyers can traverse safely.
And unless you’re lucky enough to have a lawyer on retainer or one in the family, people are left to their own devices. As experience has shown, the internet isn’t a substitute for sound legal advice, and too often people believe they “know” the law to their enormous detriment. No, filing a UCC 1-308 does not protect you from being sued and cops do not have to give you Miranda warnings or your case gets dismissed.
Over the years, a myriad of options were raised as being the solution, from Washington State’s 3LTs to non-lawyer owned firms to app-based miracle solutions. To a small extent, some have survived their initial hype to find a place in the legal ecosystem, but none “solved” the problem. Here we are, the practice of law largely the same as it was a generation ago, the gimmicks fallen by the wayside and the poor no closer to having access to legal advice than before.
But what about kiosks?
The Center for Social Justice at Western New England School of Law wants to change that.
Now, there’s a kiosk to help. Eleven of them, in fact, placed around the city with the help of funding from the MassMutual Foundation.
Why it’s called the “Center for Social Justice” is unclear. Perhaps giving free legal advice is “social justice,” or perhaps it’s just a trendy name that appeals to the sort of law student who wants to do this. Hopefully, it doesn’t mean that they only give advice to people of a certain race or gender, but one can never be sure.
The kiosks enable residents to access information about legal issues such as domestic violence, eviction and homelessness, discover the nearest providers of free legal services and print out forms and papers they may need. In some locations, individuals may also join online meetings and participate in virtual court sessions.
At one point, there was an idea of putting law offices in warehouse stores to make lawyers available where the people were performing low bono. This seems to be a variation on that theme, but for free. Free is good.
“These kiosks are an attempt to work upstream of that and to intercede in any legal issues before it gets into the court system,” said Clemmer. “The next phase is going to be the justice bus project, which will help take these kiosks and bring them out to community events.”
Extending the kiosk notion to a bus and bringing it to events seems like a smart way to make lawyers more accessible. But all of this depends, to a large extent, on whether this concept actually helps people and accomplishes its putative purposes. While the idea of kiosks (or a bus) sounds nice, what do they do?
To date, the MassMutual Foundation has awarded over $1 million of funding to Western New England University’s Center of Social Justice.
The first step of the effort, Clemmer said, sought to help citizens facing consumer debt situations and to provide legal counsel on the spot.
Over the course of nearly two years, some 513 individuals received legal advice, according to the law school. Volunteers, including law students and area attorneys, logged 749 hours of service and rendered an estimated $170,000 worth of legal services.
On the one hand, you might wonder what became of the million dollars from the foundation. Damn nice kiosks? The director of the Center for Social Justice needed new curtains? As the kiosks were served by law students and volunteer lawyers (who presumably spent more time supervising students than lawyering), they weren’t getting paid, so where did a million dollars go?
On the other hand, they put a million dollars in and got an “estimated” $170,000 worth of legal advice out. Granted, lawyers suck at math, but even lawyers can figure out these is not a wise investment. That only 513 people were served over two years is remarkably underwhelming. Does this reflect the fact that people in need of legal advice would prefer not to get it from some kid at a kiosk or that there just aren’t that many people in need of free legal advice?
And on the third hand, there is a certain arrogance of law schools, law profs and law students that they are competent to give legal advice to anyone. Poor people aren’t for practice. If you’re going to give legal advice, it should be competent, accurate and practical. Are law students equipped to do this? Based on what, their vast experience in the trenches, their having aced “Law & Nietzsche,” their nifty tats and purple hair? If a person has child custody problems, should their family be risked by a student who couldn’t find their way to family court without Wayze?
To be fair, these students may be well trained, willing and, of course, free, which enables poor people to get advice they would otherwise have to do without. To a large degree, even simplistic or mediocre legal advice can be better than none, and it would be unfair to claim they weren’t giving competent advice without knowing far more about how they were trained and what they actually do.
But if it costs $1 million to give away $170,000 worth of legal advice at a kiosk by law students, maybe this isn’t the answer to helping the poor and just another academic indulgence in the name of social justice.
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