Jeffrey Selbin

Service Delivery, Resource Allocation and Access to Justice: Greiner and Pattanayak and the Research Imperative

In this essay, we reflect on Jim Greiner and Cassandra Pattanayak’s provocative article reporting the results of a randomized controlled trial evaluating legal assistance to low-income clients at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. Studying the outcomes of appeals from initial denials of unemployment insurance benefit claims Greiner and Pattanayak asked, what difference does legal representation make? Their answer is that “an offer of HLAB representation had no statistically significant effect on the probability that a claimant would prevail, but that the offer did delay the adjudicatory process.” That is, not only was an offer of legal assistance immaterial to the case outcome, it may have harmed clients’ interests. The Greiner and Pattanayak findings challenge our intuition, experience and deeply-held professional belief that lawyer representation of indigent clients in civil matters is fundamental to the pursuit of justice. Our first reaction is that the study must have fatal conceptual or methodological flaws – the researchers studied the wrong thing in the wrong way. Even when we learn that the study is credible and well designed, we doubt that this kind of research is a worthwhile use of our time or money relative to serving needy clients. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we worry that the published results will only serve as fodder for the decades-long political assault on legal services for the poor. If replicated across venues, however, studies like Greiner and Pattanayak’s can tell us a great deal about individual representation, program design and systemic access to justice questions. In fact, we cannot make genuine progress in any of these areas – much less marshal the case for more robust legal aid investments and the right to counsel in some civil cases – without better evidence of when, where and for whom representation makes a difference. Fortunately, developments in law schools, the professions and a growing demand for evidence-driven policymaking provide support, infrastructure and incentive for such research. For these reasons, we urge legal services lawyers and clinical law professors to collaborate in an expansive, empirical research agenda.

From 'The Art of War' to 'Being Peace': Mindfulness and Community Lawyering in a Neoliberal Age

Through a case study and lawyer narrative describing the role of the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) in a housing development struggle in West Oakland, California, this Article explores the intersection of the practice of community lawyering with the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness is a practice that cultivates the conscious interplay between the interior world of self and the outer world of relationships. A small literature on law and mindfulness has emerged, in which mindfulness is prescribed both as a palliative for an ailing profession and a model for increased attentiveness to the needs of clients. This Article suggests that mindfulness is also relevant to the practice of advocating for community economic justice. Part I describes the implications for Oakland of the shift in the U.S. political economy to a post-industrial, neoliberal regime. Part II describes EBCLCs Community Economic Justice practice. Part III provides a case study of a struggle in which private developers, local residents and city officials squared off over the nature and implications of the largest market-rate housing development so far in the history of West Oakland. Through a first-person narrative, lead attorney Margaretta Lin reflects on the lessons of this struggle through the lens of mindfulness. Part IV offers a tentative theory on the practice of mindful lawyering. We suggest that mindfulness can be more than a self-help practice for the legal profession. Mindfulness can help community lawyers balance a central tension in their work: how best to advocate on behalf of subordinated and disenfranchised communities within the existing political economy while holding fast to a vision of civic life that is more diverse, transparent and participatory.

Eleanor Swift's Indelible Public Interest Legacy at Berkeley Law

This festschrift essay celebrates Professor Eleanor Swift’s singular role and legacy in building Berkeley Law’s vibrant public interest program. Thousands of students have passed through one or more of the experiential education courses and social justice programs that Professor Swift helped to create, build and sustain. In these settings, students have learned to be better lawyers and better people. They have provided legal services to underserved individuals, groups and causes. And they have given content to the law school’s public mission to solve real-world problems and create a more just society.

Poverty Law: United States

“Poverty law” refers to policy and lawyering strategies to contest inequality. The rise of the federal welfare state shaped the contours of poverty law in the first half of the twentieth century. This combined with the rights revolution at mid-century to mobilize legal services lawyers and courts in the War on Poverty, which was the zenith of the antipoverty movement. The welfare state’s subsequent decline and federal court retrenchment have channeled the antipoverty movement in new directions forged by decentralization, privatization, and globalization. This encyclopedia entry traces poverty laws history and more recent response to these trends by moving downward (from federal to local), outward (from state to market), and beyond (from domestic to global).