The United States Constitution’s elemental precept, “form[ing] a more perfect Union,” launched from citizens’ longing to “establish Justice.” One of this country’s top societal dilemmas is that countless Americans cannot pay the expenses of retaining professional legal help when they most require it. Numerous pro se litigants have aggravated their problems by fruitlessly ending their own legal affairs, forsaking their constitutional rights, or struggling single- handedly with intricate legal issues.
Lamentably, the cumulative outcomes of citizens’ untrained legal responses to their respective quandaries have weakened American social underpinnings. Irrespective of the means by which such legal cases have concluded, adverse derivative consequences have frequently harmed those close to individuals with unmet legal needs. Such undesirable effects have amassed to the point that nearly everybody has suffered, at least indirectly, through higher costs or lost opportunities. Accordingly, the United States Constitution’s assurance of evenhanded access to justice for everyone is void for much of the populace.
The nation’s powerlessness to render cohesive, easily attainable support to the masses for at least some of their legal challenges is a colossal national shortcoming. Two of the American legal system’s hallmarks, purposeful case progression and deference to legal precedence, have thwarted individuals by creating a system that is overtaxed, unreachable, and incomprehensible to most of the public. These conditions pre-existed the twenty-first century. Furthermore, throughout this same period, as lawyers’ salaries increased, many were unwilling to offer reasonably-priced assistance to countless lower and middle-class citizens. This is due to multiple interrelated problems, such as divergent thinking on how legal practice might evolve.
Concurrently, the national legal education system failed to effectively support the public’s need for more legal help. Although the estimated work projection for lawyers is expected to rise 6% by 2024, law school registration numbers are decreasing, to some extent owing to wheeling tuition charges. Similarly, although paralegal jobs are anticipated to swing upwards by 8%, paralegals and legal assistants do not have distinct scholarly avenues to tread. In effect, legal academia is not adjusting well to the estimated demand for legal service providers in the future.
The range of associated issues is quite extensive and therefore beyond the range of this article. Nonetheless, significant retooling appears necessary. It is pivotal to determine the consequences this pool of up-and-coming lawyers could bring to the public’s access to legal help. At a minimum, the legal scholastic community should make a deliberate assessment of the full gamut of legal service providers as a starting appraisal. Such data could decisively show whether our nation’s problem is an insufficient number of attorneys or whether the primary issue is high-priced legal services.
Either way, and depending upon the precise results of this kind of study, the United States legal community may need to learn a tough lesson. This lesson is that the country’s legal system must meet its citizens’ legal needs. Meeting such needs will almost certainly involve enhanced options for obtaining legal education.
Understanding the justice gap’s beginnings is an important component to bridging this gap because citizens’ power to readily access legal services is integral to this nation’s democratic operations. By appreciating the actual bases for the justice gap’s existence, the legal scholastic community may find a good site to begin understanding this enormous problem. Such understanding may lead to fresh prospects through legal education for at least a fractional resolution to the impasse. Moreover, such knowledge might lead to answering the strategic directional questions that still need asking.
Those working in legal education need to first comprehend what created the justice gap before plotting the course toward solving the crisis. Otherwise, they risk never finding the way out of the calamity for want of an acceptable starting point.