Mediation
As a Means of Access to Justice By Robert Jacobs I keep a famous cartoon on my desk from The New Yorker magazine. It shows a client sitting across a desk from his lawyer. The lawyer has been reviewing a set of documents and the client looks surprised when the lawyer says “You have a pretty good case, Mr. Pitkin. How much justice can you afford?” Let’s face it: legal services are a resource just like anything else. If a client is prepared to pay enough money they can retain the brightest legal talent around. But what about those clients who can’t afford to pay thousands of dollars for a lawyer to champion their cause or defend them against a spurious claim?
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JULY 2021
The easy answer is to say that attorneys should provide more pro bono services. There’s a place for that but it’s unlikely the supply of pro bono services will ever catch up to the legal needs of indigent clients. Attorneys are service providers. When consumers can’t afford to pay for their services, are attorneys any different than doctors? Or dentists? Or car mechanics? Few auto mechanics offer to fix cars for underserved populations who can’t afford their services. But we view doctors and lawyers differently. We are professionals. Doctors have a unique, regulated access to highlyskilled care that can make the difference between life and death. Lawyers have the skills and training that can
make the difference between financial ruin and success. But lawyers have to be careful. Legal publishers aren’t knocking on our doors to discount their charges because we are doing pro bono work. Our landlords don’t care whether or not we collect for our services. PG&E won’t cut us any slack on our utility bills; our insurers won’t discount our premiums and our staff probably won’t take a pay cut just because we are doing pro bono work. A philosophical discussion about the propriety, need or obligation of attorneys to provide pro bono services is outside the scope of this article, but the following point is self-evident: Legal services are a resource just like everything else.
