A free market approach would be something like legal insurance which would have high deductibles and cover catastrophic legal expenses - like a murder trial.
"I earned 100K last year but did 250 hours of 'community service,' so call it 90K (or whatever)."
I would suggest studying on your own. Getting answers off FR is 1. unreliable, since you don't know who the legal experts are, and 2. cheating yourself.
This is not a homework help forum. You should not expect us to do your work for you.
yikes~!!!!!!!!!!
subsidize LAWYERS in the hopes they will do more pro-bono?????
THERE IS NO conservative solution if you take money from me to pay for their legal bills.
Lawyers doing pro-bono on their own, is good. Giving them tax deduction for their time is OK I guess. (I am for anything that reduces tax payments)
They already have public defenders and until we do away with contingency lawsuits there will be no shortage of sleazy plaintiff lawyers willing to take cases “on the come”
No taxpayer subsidies. Who would define “regular” law firms? The minute you have subsidies, you have groups springing up to funnel taxpayer money into their own hare-brained leftist ideological schemes. Much of what these “legal aid” groups do is extort money from working people and transfer it to non-working people. What’s really needed is to change the civil court system so that it can be used by ordinary people directly, without needing a lawyer to sort out issues relating to ordinary life activities. For complex situation where lawyers are really needed, pro bono work by real working lawyers, and charitable assistance from religious and community groups should handle it.
Any teacher that is making you write about access to legal services is going to balk at giving any assitance to a private firm. If you haven’t noticed yet, typically the public interest folks aren’t exactly lovy-dovy with firm folks, despite the pro bono work firms provide.
1. Look at LAMP programs that help support military members. This provides legal services to a targeted market (service members). Through networking and focusing on a targeted market (mid to low income people), acess is increased.
http://www.abanet.org/legalservices/lamp/
http://www.ncbar.com/lamp/index.asp
2. Look at organizations that provide access to such people through networks with solo and small firms. Again, by establishing an external network and running referals, such groups are able to connect needs with services without the overhead of actually taking the cases themselves.
http://www.civiljusticenetwork.org/default.html
3. Legislatures and advocacy can work with legal assitance organizations to fine turn their income cut off limits to assure greater access. For example, in one state a group of lawyers worked to get legal assistance organizations to increase their max income levels to accomodate military service members during war time. This temporary fix helped people in need who were priced out of the private firm market, but too “wealthy” for the legal asssitance market, during a time of crisis. The same could be done for other populations during times of crisis, i.e. borrowers during this housing fiasco, homeowners going against their insurers during Katrina, etc. Note, keeping in the free market theme, this is not a government imposed price mandate or even a regulation, rather it is lobbying and collaborating to identify a need and implement a short-term solution.
4. Another approach is to empower lower income people to do it themselves. There are a number of ways of doing so. First, there’s a new trend called unbundling services. I think it works as follows - I as a lawyer will tell you what to do, what to file, etc., but you will do all the work. That would slash the fees significantly. Second, providing people with information, such as how-to phamlets (which are widely available online) helps people do things pro se.
5. Someone alluded to this already, look into pre-paid legal services.
Finally, do some research on this using your lexisnexis/westlaw accounts (journals and law reviews). I searched online and found the following.
THE CASE FOR A FREE MARKET IN LEGAL SERVICES
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa322xa.pdf
Bidding by the Bar: Online Auction Sites for Legal Services
http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/943122-1.html
What is the Legal Services Corporation?
The Congress of the United States entrusts the Legal Services Corporation with a dual mission: to promote equal access to justice and to provide high-quality civil legal assistance to low-income Americans.
Congress created LSC in 1974. Each year, as part of the budget process, Congress appropriates money for LSC. A bipartisan, 11-member Board of Directors — appointed by the President of the United States with the advice and consent of the Senate — oversees all aspects of LSC operations.
Legal Services as Political Movement
Legal Services sees itself as a “movement.”5
According to its founders, its primary mission is not to meet the needs of individual poor people, but to achieve broader social change through “law reform.”6
The Legal Services agenda is grounded in the belief that the “system” creates poverty; therefore, it is the system — America’s economic, political, and cultural institutions — that must be altered. To this end, the LSC:
(snip)
During the 1980s, even though its budget was cut by Congress, the program survived an attempt by the Reagan Administration to eliminate it.
http://www.heritage.org/research/legalissues/BG1057.cfm
Sounds like a typical socialist plot to use other people's money to fund a parasitic monopoly. The law should be simple and the education system proficient enough to enable folks to handle simplicity. Simplicity can be achieved by hanging all the politicians, lawyers and law professors and then notifying the Ed establishment that they're next unless their performance rises out of the gutter.
What if the government used the method that the military uses for its doctors/dentists. In exchange for the education necessary being paid by the government, the recipient agrees to work at a community legal services clinic for XXX years at a government salary. After that term of service is met, then they can go work for a private firm, or continue in government service.
I would use that method to solve the medical insurance ‘crisis’ also - The government will assist/pay for med school, in exchange for 6-8 years working in a free community clinic, at the poor or uninsured LEGAL residents can access.
Under both plans, maybe include a buy-out option, so if a big law-firm wants to snap up some great lawyer who went to school paid for by the government, then they can pay double the cost to the govt, and release them from their commitment.
Hey, maybe I should run for president??