The Ginger (Law) Librarian

The Findlaw Blog is reporting that [a]fter contentious debate, the delegates to the ABA's midyear meeting adopted a modest proposal to give states a framework for considering regulation of "nontraditional legal service providers." The debate over the proposal, Resolution 105 , was heated. Some delegates worried that it would take away business from attorneys who are already struggling. Others, that it would lead to the creation a lower tier of less-qualified legal providers, particularly for the poor. Opponents included the New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Nevada, and Texas bars, according to The American Lawyer, along with the ABA's litigation and solo and small firm sections. Backing the resolution were the South Carolina, Washington State, and San Francisco bars, along with the ABA's business law section. As noted, Resolution 105 is a fairly cautious step toward nonlawyer legal services. The resolution does not explicitly endorse nonlawyer legal se...

In June, it was reported that Washington became the first state to allow limited licensing for legal technicians. Now, the Utah Supreme Court has adopted a recommendation from its Task Force to Examine Limited Legal Licensing to move forward with a program that would authorize "licensed paralegal practitioners" to perform limited services in specified practice areas. The 58-page report urged the court to authorize LPPs to perform “a subset of discrete legal services” in three practice areas: family law, eviction and debt collection. It looks like this is becoming a trend that might actually take hold.

It seems that all states have issues keeping up with public defense. I have written before about Florida & Michigan 's troubles, and now it seems to be Missouri's turn. The NYTimes recently ran a story about the troubles facing Missouri's public defender system. At this point, public defenders in both Missouri and Miami (Florida) have won the right to refuse cases because of the extremely high caseloads. "Chronically understaffed, and reeling from caseloads several times larger than those managed by private lawyers, public defenders here and in many parts of the country have started trying to force legislators to respond. In the last two years, defender agencies in Missouri and Miami have won, in state Supreme Courts, the right to refuse new cases they cannot responsibly handle." "In Missouri, where public defenders say they are especially burdened, many legal experts hope that an exhaustive new analysis of workloads and needs, sponsored by the Amer...

While I was listening to This American Life on NPR this weekend, I heard a horrifying story about Florida's new Timely Justice Act . The Act essentially speeds up the death penalty process. "It sets a deadline of 30 days for the governor to sign a death warrant once an inmate’s appeals become final—that is, after at least one round of state and federal appeals, and after a review by the governor for clemency. And once the governor signs the warrant, the Timely Justice Act says the execution must occur within 180 days." To some, this may seem like a good thing if we look at the death penalty in purely economic terms. It is hugely expensive  to put someone to death with all of the appeals and years and years of waiting on death row. But it's not purely economic because ' death is different .' It is imperative that we go through the legal processes because we can't undo this punishment. "One of the enduring arguments in Supreme Court death penalty...

This year marks 50 years since the landmark Supreme Court case, Gideon v. Wainwright , was decided. Gideon v. Wainwright set the standard "that anyone too poor to hire a lawyer must be provided one free in any criminal case involving a felony charge." This set a wide-reaching mandate for both federal and states courts, but states cannot keep up. "While the constitutional commitment is generally met in federal courts, it is a different story in state courts, which handle about 95 percent of America’s criminal cases. This matters because, by well-informed estimates, at least 80 percent of state criminal defendants cannot afford to pay for lawyers and have to depend on court-appointed counsel." After Gideon was decided, Florida established a public defender office that was a shining model for the rest of the country, but demand has outpaced financing as "caseloads for Miami defenders have grown to 500 felonies a year, though the American Bar Association guidel...