As I recently wrote, in the process of trying to figure out whether our lawyer regulatory system is working as well as it should be, I had something of a “Paul on the road to Damascus” moment when I realized that I shouldn’t be focusing on lawyers but instead on those who complain about them. My thesis is that as people of limited means continue to move away from using lawyers, and fewer lawyers represent folks in “personal crisis” matters (criminal, divorce, credit and collection, housing) the numbers of grievances will continue to drop.

But what about these people? Who will carry their water in our justice system? While Gideon guarantees counsel for some in criminal cases, what about the rest? Can an adversarial system do justice when one side of the battle is unarmed? Can judges, who are sworn to be neutral, adopt a different posture when an unrepresented litigant comes before them? Can non-lawyers fill the bill when lawyers can’t find a way to do that work and still keep their lights on?

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