Service Delivery, Resource Allocation and Access to Justice: Greiner and Pattanayak and the Research Imperative

In this essay, we reflect on Jim Greiner and Cassandra Pattanayak’s provocative article reporting the results of a randomized controlled trial evaluating legal assistance to low-income clients at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. Studying the outcomes of appeals from initial denials of unemployment insurance benefit claims Greiner and Pattanayak asked, what difference does legal representation make? Their answer is that “an offer of HLAB representation had no statistically significant effect on the probability that a claimant would prevail, but that the offer did delay the adjudicatory process.” That is, not only was an offer of legal assistance immaterial to the case outcome, it may have harmed clients’ interests. The Greiner and Pattanayak findings challenge our intuition, experience and deeply-held professional belief that lawyer representation of indigent clients in civil matters is fundamental to the pursuit of justice. Our first reaction is that the study must have fatal conceptual or methodological flaws – the researchers studied the wrong thing in the wrong way. Even when we learn that the study is credible and well designed, we doubt that this kind of research is a worthwhile use of our time or money relative to serving needy clients. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we worry that the published results will only serve as fodder for the decades-long political assault on legal services for the poor. If replicated across venues, however, studies like Greiner and Pattanayak’s can tell us a great deal about individual representation, program design and systemic access to justice questions. In fact, we cannot make genuine progress in any of these areas – much less marshal the case for more robust legal aid investments and the right to counsel in some civil cases – without better evidence of when, where and for whom representation makes a difference. Fortunately, developments in law schools, the professions and a growing demand for evidence-driven policymaking provide support, infrastructure and incentive for such research. For these reasons, we urge legal services lawyers and clinical law professors to collaborate in an expansive, empirical research agenda

The Continuing Work of the Bellow Scholars

In November 2010, the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law hosted the fourth Bellow Scholar Workshop and subsequently published the work of two Bellow Scholars in Volume 16 of the UDC Law Review.1 I was privileged to contribute a foreword to Volume 16 in which I commented on thelegacy of my late husband, Gary Bellow, and offered a brief narrative of the origins of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Clinical Section\u27s Bellow Scholar program.2 Most of the earliest Bellow Scholars had worked with Gary or had taken his courses. We understood that we could best honor his legacy by building a capacityfor rigorous analysis and investigation, carried out in a community of activists willing to learn from each other and from other disciplines. 3Our goal was to better understand and address significant problems in the lives of low- and moderate-income people.4 We expected that we would also critically examine both the content and methods of our teaching and the learning goals we pursued in our clinics

Attendee Discussion: How Should Legal Educators and Law Schools Respond to These Changes?

Michael Kelly. The Gaping Hole in American Legal Education. Major changes that have occurred in law during the last three decades (such as intense competition and phenomenal increases in compensation in the private sector, and consolidation in law practices of all kinds) have been driven by tightly managed and strongly focused practice organizations. But understanding how organizations function is not part of law school curricula or pedagogy or the agenda of those who would reform legal education. Equipping law students for a career in law in the 21st Century now requires understanding organizations, whether lawyers represent them, oppose them or work within them. And legal ethics teaching in law school--focused on the rules and principles applicable to all lawyers in a unitary profession--needs extension to the ethical realities of organizations that are now fundamental to a highly differentiated and segmented profession

Attendee Discussion: Changes in Medium and Small Law Firms (Including Solo Practices), and the Issues These Changes Raise

William Hornsby: Lawyering for Personal Legal Services - a Work in Progress Synopsis From the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, law firm structures did not change substantially. The practice of Abraham Lincoln did not look much different than that portrayed by Perry Mason on television in the 1960s. Over the past 50 years, however, a series of dynamics have led to substantial changes in the ways that lawyers find and serve people with personal legal needs. The consumer movement of the 1960s and ‘70s resulted in dramatic practice management changes that were stimulated by the emergence of law firm clinics. The Supreme Court decision in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona enabled lawyers to advertise and facilitated a series of strategies to expand client development. Certification of specialty, improvements in lawyer referral services and advances in prepaid legal services expanded the pipeline driving middle class consumer with legal needs to lawyers who would provide those services at affordable costs. The emergence of the Internet in the 1990s has had the same effect. It has created better outlets for client development, including online directories, templated web sites, Q & A forums, legal matching sites, group advertising models and consumer rating sites. Web 2.0 has presented additional opportunities as lawyers seek client both directly and indirectly through social networks, social media, blogs and twitter. However, the Internet has also resulted in competition for routine legal matters from other sources, including non-profit entities, courts and commercial enterprises. The Internet has also expanded opportunities for client interface through virtual law offices. The economic downturn in the late 2000s may have lead to a contraction of legal services, which could stimulate important changes. Unbundled legal services to those who would otherwise go forward pro se is evolving. Also, niche practices are emerging. The law schools, except for those in the top tier, should realize that a large percentage of their graduates will provide personal legal services and should prepare them for that type of practice. Teaching practice management skills should be embraced and considered as important as other courses. The law schools should reconsider their role in defining the values of society and prepare students to protect the interests of children in divorce cases with the same dignity and stature as they now prepare students to defend corporate interests that frequently cause great harm