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“Judicial and legal policy makers have gradually come to the realization that there will never be enough affordable legal services to meet the demand for full legal representation for all eligible individuals. Given existing budgetary constraints, a 400% increase in funding for legal services is highly unlikely. Similarly unlikely is a dramatic increase in pro bono activity by lawyers, a dramatic decrease in legal fees, or a return to the barter system of an earlier era in which clients could pay for legal assistance with their own goods or services.” . . .

“It should be no surprise, therefore, that increasing numbers of people choose self-representation as the only feasible option for securing necessary legal rights and remedies. In recognition of the reality of litigants’ needs, the courts and the legal community have slowly shifted from insistence on full-representation for every litigant as a fundamental requirement of equal justice to a more pragmatic approach, offering information and limited counsel for those litigants who are capable of managing their own cases and reserving full-representation for those with more complex cases or fewer personal resources.”

In discussing this shift in outlook, the article explores the need to distinguish between providing legal services (which must be done by lawyers) and providing legal information (which can come from a number of other sources), in constructing solutions to the access problem.  Ms. Hannaford presents a thoughtful analysis that fills in some of the history and theory behind the assertions in my posting of July, 15, 2003, “Pro Bono is Not the Answer to the Access Problem (Self-Help Is),” which concluded that ”the most effective way to improve access to the American justice system is to spend public and private dollars and resources helping consumers solve their own legal problems, rather providing lawyers for them.”