I listened to an interesting podcast on Slate’s “Amicus” site the other day. The title was “Lawyers, Who Needs Them?” Dahlia Lithwick was interviewing Rebecca Sandefur, whose Wiki bio describes her as “an American sociologist who won a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2018 for ‘promoting a new, evidence-based approach to increasing access to civil justice for low-income communities.’

If the last sentence doesn’t cause you to pause or mutter “WTF?,” read it again. Yes, this professor got money to study whether the world might be better off if there were places other than law offices where folks could get quick and easy access to legal information. I have to admit she might have a point though.

As we all know, much of what we do every day is explain the law to folks lost in the legal or regulatory forest. Smart folks call it knowledge asymmetry. Studies, including one by the American Bar Foundation which I wrote about some time ago, tell us that many people don’t perceive legal problems or issues the way we do. (I’m talking about non-criminal stuff here. Anyone who has been arrested understands they have a legal problem. If they don’t, their free lawyer will explain it.)