Post by Jim on Jun 12, 2009 14:50:04 GMT -5
“I wish the reality of our professionat least as viewed by the people we purport to servecould be seen as a "glass half-full." I am afraid, however, that because lawyers view justice differently than nonlawyers, we are drinking from different cups. For too long, we who are in the system of justice have insisted that those outside defer to our point of view. I think it is time we look at ourselves through their eyes.
“If the non-lawyers in our society truly expect that we are interested in justice (as the majority of people understand it to be), we first must accept the fact that we are not now, and quite possibly never have been, viewed by our community as the professionals we claim to be. Instead, we are viewed (in many ways rightly so) as the educated and wealthy elite, making our living by helping the legally illiterate maneuver through the procedural waters of the law that we have created and that cannot be navigated without us. It is an unfortunate reality that those who are not educated in the law are required to navigate these waters as a condition of their membership in this society.”
David L. Geislinger, What Price Justice? Why Was Amendment 40 Even on the Ballot?, 36 Colo.Law. 5 (May, 2007) at 77.
"Under the English common law with its complicated forms of action and veritable maze of writs and confusing procedures, the right to retain counsel in civil proceedings became a necessity. By the middle of the thirteenth century, lawyers so monopolized the courts in London that the King was forced to decree that, except for a few special causes, litigants were entitled to plead their own cases without lawyers."
Iannaccone v. Law, 142 F.3d 553 (2d Cir. 1998) (citing The Right to Counsel in Civil Litigation, 66 Colum. L. Rev. 1322, 1325 (1966)).
“If the non-lawyers in our society truly expect that we are interested in justice (as the majority of people understand it to be), we first must accept the fact that we are not now, and quite possibly never have been, viewed by our community as the professionals we claim to be. Instead, we are viewed (in many ways rightly so) as the educated and wealthy elite, making our living by helping the legally illiterate maneuver through the procedural waters of the law that we have created and that cannot be navigated without us. It is an unfortunate reality that those who are not educated in the law are required to navigate these waters as a condition of their membership in this society.”
David L. Geislinger, What Price Justice? Why Was Amendment 40 Even on the Ballot?, 36 Colo.Law. 5 (May, 2007) at 77.
"Under the English common law with its complicated forms of action and veritable maze of writs and confusing procedures, the right to retain counsel in civil proceedings became a necessity. By the middle of the thirteenth century, lawyers so monopolized the courts in London that the King was forced to decree that, except for a few special causes, litigants were entitled to plead their own cases without lawyers."
Iannaccone v. Law, 142 F.3d 553 (2d Cir. 1998) (citing The Right to Counsel in Civil Litigation, 66 Colum. L. Rev. 1322, 1325 (1966)).
