PlingTalk

Love is grand; divorce is at least a hundred grand.

Time may be a great healer, but it’s also a lousy beautician.

Remember: amateurs built the ark, professionals built the Titanic.

Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.

Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.

An optimist thinks that this is the best possible world. A pessimist fears that this is true.
This civil right to counsel is known as “Civil Gideon”, after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, which affirmed the right of an indigent person to have the assistance of counsel in a criminal trial. (Retired mediator and attorney David Giacalone introduced me and other readers of the blog shlep to this movement.)

Acceptance for the notion of a civil right to counsel will come about only through cultural change in the halls of justice and among the players there, according to one of its proponents, Russell Engler, a Professor at New England School of Law. In his 2006 article, “Shaping a Context-Based Civil Gideon from the Dynamics of Social Change” (downloadable in PDF from SSRN), Professor Engler describes the actions of those standing in the way of progress thus:

In the courtroom, court personnel, including the judges, will likely encourage the unrepresented litigant to settle the case. That, in turn, may require the litigant to go to the hallway to negotiate with the lawyer, or to resort to some form of court-based mediation. The hallway negotiations are rife with instances of overreaching and unethical behavior by lawyers, unmonitored and unpunished by a legal system that depends on a high settlement rate. Where the litigants resist settlement, strong words from the judges, mediators or lawyers eventually induce litigants to settle. Few civil cases are tried, and most settlements involving the unrepresented poor occur with a minimum of judicial involvement. [Id. at 2.]

Even acknowledging variations in behavior and changes over time, it is difficult to overstate the extent to which judges, court-connected mediators, clerks, court administrators, and the bar’s rank and file are hindering the expansion of a right to counsel in transacting their daily business. While many in those ranks are focused on the “problem” of unrepresented litigants, it would be a mistake to assume that those players are natural allies in Civil Gideon initiatives. [Id. at 3.]
Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just stand there.

My inferiority complex is not as good as yours is.

I am having an out of money experience.

It’s frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.

You’re getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.

Brain cells come and brain cells go, but fat cells live forever.