Access to legal system is fundamental: John Hood of John Locke Foundation

John Locke

John Hood, Chairman of North Carolina’s John Locke Foundation, makes the same point this week that MidLaw made last week: the legal system and meaningful access to it for everybody is fundamental to our system of government. Access is a matter of infrastructure. (An on-ramp, if you will.)

Hood is not addressing the federal budget with its proposed de-funding the Legal Services Corporation. Instead, he is endorsing the just-released final report of the North Carolina Commission on the Administration of Law and Justice.

The final report calls for investments in North Carolina’s courts system up to $91 million over 6 years to improve access to the system. Hood sums up:

this plan is affordable and reflects the highest priorities of any government: public safety and the protection of individual rights.

But, if the federal government de-funds Legal Services, then the cost of the North Carolina plan will go up — both now and later.

The North Carolina report finds that

Statistics about low-income individuals’ access to lawyers are quite discouraging, … partly because legal aid programs have lost significant funding in recent years. Pro bono (donated legal services) programs have helped some litigants but simply do not have the capacity to come close to being a complete solution

Legal Aid of North Carolina brings legal services to low-income people in North Carolina. It appears to deliver a very high volume of access to justice (legal services) with limited and now declining resources. It depends heavily on funding from the Legal Services Corporation.

Hood points to technology and service providers other than lawyers, as emerging means of improving access to the justice system. He concludes:

Legal practice and public expectations are changing in response to new technologies, like it or not. North Carolina can either adjust its court system to that reality, or pay a far heavier price in the future.

Might there be better ways to deliver legal services to the poor? Technology, say, and providers other than lawyers? Bring them.

In the meantime, eliminating funding from the federal budget for Legal Services sounds like making a bad situation worse (“pay a far heavier price in the future”). And it puts a premium on State funding.

Legal aid is infrastructure, not welfare: got to have bridges so traffic can move

Word has come that the next federal budget will cut or eliminate funding for the Legal Services Corporation. Legal Services Corporation is the largest funder of legal services for the poor in the country.

Does the impetus for cutting legal aid come from a sense that legal aid to the poor is a form of welfare? Does it come from a sense that legal aid funds lawsuits against the wealthy?

That’s the wrong way to look at it. Legal aid, even when given free to the undeserving poor, is not a handout. It’s an investment in infrastructure.

The rule of law is the foundation of the economy and society. And it depends on the justice system.

Our system is complex and getting more so. (“Increasing complexity is the story of human evolution, and the story of how and why law emerged.“)

If poor people do not have effective access to this complex system, two bad things happen. First, the legal entanglements of the poor clog and burden the system. Either controversies don’t get resolved, or people try to fix them without assistance. That makes things worse.

Second, bad outcomes contaminate society. People get soured and distracted from positive, productive pursuits.

North Carolina Chief Justice Mark Martin perceptively points to domestic affairs: spousal abuse, child abuse, child custody, divorces. Often intervention by the justice system is the only fix in those cases. People helping themselves makes things worse.

That’s domestic relations. The same things can happen with healthcare, housing, veterans’ rights, benefits for the elderly, and any number of other everyday things. The unmet legal needs of poor people in these areas are growing, while funding is already on the decline.

Removing legal aid from the federal budget will make things worse. It will make our system more expensive for everybody, not less. And it will exacerbate negative spirits generally — in a way that drags down the economy, politics, and society at large.

Legal Services Corporation channels funds to local agencies such as Legal Aid of North Carolina. If there’s something wrong with Legal Services in particular, then fix that. But don’t take the resources out of the system.

Legal aid ain’t a handout. It’s bridges and roads.

Traffic has to move. Pay me now, or pay me more later.

 

 

Immigration restrictions said to cause recent declines in US technology, innovation, entrepreneurship

Brooks Pierce friend Vivek Wadhwa believes that US immigration restrictions are creating a reverse brain drain. He says skilled innovators come to the US for education, then get frustrated with US treatment of immigrants, and go home.

Vivek has tracked US restrictions on immigrants to the surge of start-ups in China and India — and he links that surge to recent declines in the US. So, he’s got the cure:

We need to make it easy for entrepreneurs
abroad to bring start-up firms to the United
States. One solution is to provide a ‘start-up
visa’ as a path to permanent residency. This
would perhaps be valid for five years, with
an upgrade to permanent residency dependent
on the firm’s employment of US workers.
The Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City,
Missouri has estimated that such a visa
would create 1.6 million jobs within 10 years
and boost the US economy by $224 billion
a year.

This sounds like a robust response to the challenges of globalism. Vivek says:

By becoming the best place in the world for entrepreneurs to study and work in, the United States could again be in the driving seat of technology innovation. Then we can share the resulting prosperity in a more equitable way to mitigate the anger of the electorate.

MidLaw is for that.

Probiotic flake bomb discovered in Greensboro

A compelling culinary idea.

MidLaw discovered it last week. Turns out to be a centuries-old tradition in eastern Europe.

Phyllo pastry filled with sauerkraut. Genius.

You can get it at the Greensboro Farmers Market, at Augustino Gusto European Bakery. They make it with locally sourced sauerkraut, which they fill into a flaky (phyllo) pastry crust. No doubt there is a name for it, but MidLaw has not yet discovered that. Augustino Gusto is Romanian.

MidLaw foresees a successful chain of phyllo-sauerkraut restaurants in the offing. For now though, you are requested not to tell anyone. Do not disrupt the market for this incomparable probiotic flake bomb.

Now that MidLaw has moved in, supplies may be limited. Please do not buy any without checking first with MidLaw.

New software can do in seconds work that takes lawyers hundreds of thousands of hours annually

Bloomberg recently reported that JPMorgan Chase has deployed contract-analysis software that does in seconds work that takes lawyers hundreds of thousands of hours annually.

One thinks of John Henry who was a steel driving man. He died with a hammer in his hand.

JPMorgan’s technology budget runs to $9.6 billion. For that kind of money, you can eliminate more professions than one (or, at least more categories of services).

Keep on pounding.