representation

Cartoon depicting ants triaging wounded ants while a judge dictates how medical cases will be prioritized

Episode 60: Beyond Gideon—Rethinking Access to Justice

Is it time for an inquisitorial legal system? How about a redesigned “lawyer-less” court? This isn’t the wild west of the legal world, but rather a lively discussion among three access to justice advocates on the merits–or rather shortcomings–of a push for a civil right to counsel and possible alternatives to closing the access to justice gap. Join Law Professor Benjamin Barton (University of Tennessee), The Honorable Stephanos Bibas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and our own A2J Lab director and Harvard Law School Professor Jim Greiner in this week’s Proof Over Precedent episode.

Cartoon depicting ants triaging wounded ants while a judge dictates how medical cases will be prioritized

“Lawyers for Everyone!”: What Could Go Wrong?

Applying Gideon—the criminal right to counsel—to civil cases seems like a logical step in attaining better access to justice for everyone. So why are three heavy hitters in the access to justice space speaking out against the push for civil Gideon? The reason has to do with expansion and dilution of a limited resource.

Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors–Poster Children for the Access to Justice Gap

Recent immigration proceedings have exposed the particularly vulnerable position that unaccompanied immigrant children face in court. Heavily dependent on federally funded legal aid, their access to legal representation is challenging at best, doomed at worst. This week, we bring you a “Student Voices” blog that examines the current immigration court environment–hostile to reliance on federal support–and looks at alternative paths for funding and legal right to counsel going forward.

Episode 59: Legal Aid on the Front Line of Immigration

When it comes to immigration, the legal aid sector has pivoted its resources from affirmative relief for immigrants to defense deportation and detention center intakes. In this “Student Voices” podcast, the discussion between fellow Harvard Law School J.D. candidates Andrew Garcia and Emily Irigoyen, the latter of whom co-leads the Harvard Immigration Project, ranges from the fallout of this shift in immigration legal aid resources to the shortcomings of typical immigration proceedings and the need for family preparedness planning.

Cartoon depicting a police officer taking the shirt off of an individual's back and declaring that it was used in a crime.

Civil Forfeiture’s Access to Justice Problem

File this one under “historic laws in need of modernizing.” Civil forfeiture—the act of seizing and forfeiting physical property, regardless of whether an individual has been charged with a crime — has its roots in customs and piracy cases. But today, in addition to serving as a tool to pad police department’s budgets, it more often keeps cars, cash, and possessions out of the hands of potentially innocent individuals with no guarantee of legal representation. The result is an access to justice failure, as reported by HLS student Joe Liberman in this week’s “Student Voices” blog and podcast episode.

Divorce

Current Solutions Courts, legal services providers, and state and local Bars have responded to the flood of people without lawyers in

Housing Court Study

[su_heading size=”18″]D. James Greiner, Cassandra Wolos Pattanayak, and Jonathan Philip Hennessy, “How Effective are Limited Legal Assistance Programs? A Randomized

District Court Study

[su_heading size=”18″]D. James Greiner, Cassandra Wolos Pattanayak, and Jonathan Hennessy, “The Limits of Unbundled Legal Assistance: A Randomized Study in a Massachusetts

Unemployment Representation Study

[su_heading size=”18″]James Greiner and Cassandra Wolos Pattanayak, “Randomized Evaluation in Legal Assistance: What Difference Does Representation (Offer and Actual Use)

Financial Distress

Problems with Current Solutions Some have suggested legal representation. But there will never be sufficient legal aid resources to provide

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