Talk Justice, an LSC Podcast: The Problem of Lawyerless Courts
Contact
Carl Rauscher
Director of Communications and Media Relations
rauscherc@lsc.gov
202-295-1615
WASHINGTON–Legal experts discuss their research on America’s “lawyerless” state civil courts on the latest episode of LSC's “Talk Justice” podcast, released today. Jason Tashea, a member of LSC’s Emerging Leaders Council, hosts the conversation with guests Anna Carpenter, professor of law at University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law and founder of the Justice Lab; Alyx Mark, assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University; and Colleen Shanahan, clinical professor of law at Columbia University Law School and founder of the Community Advocacy Lab.
In their July 2022 article, “America’s Lawyerless Courts,” published by the American Bar Association, Carpenter, Shanahan, Mark, and their colleague Jessica Steinberg explore the current state of affairs in civil courts. They found a disconnect between what courts were designed to do—solve legal disputes through lawyer-driven, adversarial litigation—and what these courts are asked to do today—help people without lawyers navigate complex social, economic and interpersonal challenges, most of which, they say, are deeply tied to structural inequality.
“Increasingly courts are handling issues that don’t fit under the traditional header of a ‘legal dispute’ which is changing the landscape of who is coming to court, and this is in part due to the political branches of government failing to adequately engage in social provision in the face of mounting poverty in the American population,” says Mark.
Their research shows that rates of self-representation are above 90% on many dockets, leaving ordinary people to navigate a system built by and for lawyers.
“I think we as a profession, as lawyers, are in a place where we are just starting to meaningfully reckon with how badly our profession has failed ourselves and the public,” says Carpenter.
“And it’s not that it’s what any one of us or any group of us intended to do, but it is the outcome of the incentive structures [and] of the systems that we’ve built and that we are responsible for,” she adds.
The authors agree that civil justice reform is urgently needed to ensure access to justice in state courts. Shanahan says that this reform must come both “top-down” from those with power in the current system—judges, lawyers, policymakers—and “bottom-up” from everyday people in communities who most often come into contact with the civil justice system.
“We absolutely are trying to get elite audiences with power to care about these problems, to recognize their capacity to change them and to do so,” says Shanahan. “Just as we’re seeing elites start to engage in these questions of access to justice reform, I also think there are seeds growing in the bottom-up piece…I think the perspective of self-represented litigants [and] more broadly of the communities that are most affected by these experiences is essential.”
Talk Justice episodes are available online and on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple and other popular podcast apps. The podcast is sponsored by LSC’s Leaders Council.
The next episode of the podcast will feature an interview with Harvard’s 300th Anniversary University Professor and former Law Dean Martha Minow about access to justice and her role as Board Chair of the McArthur Foundation.