A new proposal in Arizona would allow people to defend people against criminal charges on the strength f a one-year "Master's of Legal Studies". Only charges with a possible death sentence would require a lawyer.
Dave Byers, director of the Arizona Supreme Court, is touting this proposal. He maintains that it is needed to fill a dearth of defense lawyers. He also suggests that a single year of study would give practitioners adequate, even superior training in law. In his view, all that is needed for criminal work could be condensed into two semesters.
Old Guy would like to see how. Constitutional law alone is usually a full year, and it may not proceed well if taught at the same time as criminal evidence. Or is it proposed to dispense with constitutional law as an allegedly unnecessary course? When lifelong imprisonment is at stake?
Old Guy also wonders why the abundant lawyers who cannot find work are not flocking to Arizona if there is so much unfilled demand.
Lowering the standards seems like a big mistake, and criminal defense is by no means less deserving of proper legal services than corporate law or civil litigation. Perhaps the idea is to stick criminal defendants with a cheap warm body, with the advantage redounding to the favor of the prosecution.
in response to the previous posting, someone said that South Dakota now allows graduates of the University of South Dakota to become lawyers without passing the bar exam. After failing it three times, one is permanently disqualified. A new scheme, however, allows people to work in a supervised setting for a while and gain admission in that way.
ReplyDeleteOld Guy opposes this practice. Why can a capable graduate not pass within three sittings? It just isn't that difficult. This looks like yet another way to admit incompetent people to the practice of law.
It's also a way to circumvent ABA Bar Exam passage requirements and sanctions.
DeleteHere's the reality: there are plenty of lawyers...but nobody wants to pay a lawyer. This is especially true when it comes to providing legal representation to criminal defendants. The reimbursement rates for panel attorneys in most jurisdictions are pathetic. There is no shortage of attorneys in Arizona-or anywhere else in the USA. Instead, it's a pretty simple issue: nobody wants to pay the attorneys. So instead they invent "limited" law practice license, allowing those who don't attend law school to still practice. And it's not just AZ; both WA and CO allow limited practice-and there are probably other states, too.
ReplyDeleteSo the advice on this blog is don't go to law school, as it's overpriced and finding a job is tough. Allowing non-attorneys to practice law will make finding a job even tougher.
With non-lawyers now in the mix for competition, why in the world would anybody want to attend law school.
Just grant diploma privilege over this stupidity.
ReplyDeleteArizona already has "legal paraprofessionals" who can represent people in in the areas of Family Law, Administrative Law, Limited Jurisdiction Civil Law, Criminal Law, and Juvenile Dependency Law with either pure experience-based qualification or based on education including but not limited to the MLS, other options being stuff like an associates in paralegal studies. https://www.azcourts.gov/cld/Legal-Paraprofessional
ReplyDeleteSo this is not a proposal. It (and more areas of practice to boot) is actually a current rule. Click the link above. I see no limitation on criminal practice at all, other than the fact that separately and elsewhere there is death penalty qualification that parapro could never meet.
What I do know, however, is that there simply aren't that many of them. See the directory in the link above. There's well under 100 of these paraprofessionals statewide, and a good number of them aren't in those rural counties they're talking about.
So it seems to me that this is more about increasing the uptake on a program that already exists, as opposed to creating something new, and one way he hopes to do that is partner with the law schools (ASU and UofA) to offer something tailored to the objective and priced accordingly.
I don't necessarily have a problem with making that option available, I suppose. In my experience, most people picking these kinds of providers would've represented themselves otherwise; in no scenario could they have paid lawyer rates out of pocket. But whether that can be made the *only* option *for an indigent* seems questionable. Would a lawyer who isn't a lawyer satisfy Gideon in the context of a public defender assignment? It feels like it wouldn't, and I'm not aware of any public defender offices who have employed or contracted with one of these.
That proposal in Arizona is insane.
ReplyDeleteThe link for the news story about USD School of Law is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry7IzIZBKsU
One of the law professors at USD told me once that he turned down a position at Harvard because he thought he could better serve the Native American population of S.D. by working at USD SOL. The Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota is the one of the poorest places in America, where as many as 40% of the residents do not have electricity. That professor is full of baloney. USD School of Law is a scam school that is only concerned about its own survival.
The University of South Dakota is a major scam school. Not a single law school between Minneapolis and Seattle should survive. And maybe I should say Chicago and the Pacific.
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