The Walrus has published a piece addressing the access crisis which plagues the Canadian legal system. For my tastes, the proposed solution (guaranteed access a la health care) is precisely the wrong one: because it results in a removal of responsibility from its proper locus - namely, lawyers.
As with any discussion about reforms to the legal system, once the conversation includes lawyers, one topic, peculiarly enough, drops out of sight: meaningful sacrifices on the part of the legal community itself.
What are the problems which have been identified? Lawyers cost too much and the system is too complicated. In the abstract, what are the solutions to those problems? Make lawyers cost less and make the system less complicated. Talk to the lawyers, however, and what is the solution that they propose? Give us more money.
As the article describes, the most innovative and productive efforts arose precisely as a result of a diminution of legal aid funding. If the only metric which the legal community will consent to use is the market mechanism of pricing, then the bulk of providers of legal services will do the most economically rational thing possible within that framework: namely, chase the most lucrative work and highest-paying clientele, leaving the vast majority of legal needs unaddressed.
We already know that the organized bar cannot be relied upon to effect change within the timeframes which are required (i.e., yesterday). To take a simple example, since that day a little over twelve months ago when the paladins of justice manned the barricades in defending the precious honour of the legal profession after a newsmagazine used an unflattering word about them, has a single meaningful and effective step been taken to address the threat to our justice system represented by the high cost of legal fees? Has anyone at the highest levels of the profession done anything which has rendered actual tangible results in the over two years since the Chief Justice of Canada issued her clarion call about the "epidemic" afflicting our courts? Well, other than holding out their hands and sniffing "more, please"..
Here's a wacky idea: how about the government mandate, as a quid pro quo for the continued state-sanctioned monopoly which is granted to lawyers, that lawyers and/or law firms devote a particular amount of their time/resources to the provision of pro bono or reduced fee legal services to poor and middle-class citizens?
Bob
as a non-lawyer the pro bono thing has always struck me as unsound. Let's face it, very few professions or businesses have the concept of giving away your labour as a normal part of operations - the state usually picks up the tab for indigents for stuff like health care.
As for McLachlin CJC I would echo the thought many had on reading her comments - why don't you resign from the bench and start the kind of law firm you're pressing for?
Posted by: Mark Dowling | August 19, 2008 at 08:47 AM