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Comment by whack | Hacker News Reader

> The case has also highlighted the issue of migrant workers' access to justice. Ms Parti was able to stay in Singapore and fight her case due to the support of the non-governmental organisation Home, and lawyer Anil Balchandani, who acted pro bono but estimated his legal fees would have otherwise come up to S$150,000.

It's worth noting that she was only able to get justice, because of the volunteer work put in by a very good lawyer - someone whose fees she could have never afforded.

This doesn't seem unique to Singapore - I've heard of this problem existing in every country. The legal system only works if you have the money to bankroll your case. Even a multimillionaire like Hulk Hogan couldn't have prevailed against Gawker without a billionaire backing him. It boggles my mind that such a pay-to-play system is still considered to be acceptable.

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> It's worth noting that she was only able to get justice

I'm not sure why people keep saying she got justice. It's not justice until she's compensated for the lost salary / effort of defending herself, and the person who wrongly accused her is punished, along with the corrupt people who helped him.

It's not mind boggling if you look at budget allocations for Justice delivery anywhere in the world.

It doesn't generate revenue and takes up huge costs in salaries/pensions/healthcare etc.

Cities and States have finite resources and and therefore come up with formulas of how many courts, judges, cops per 100K they can afford.

Where I live there is like 1 Judge for 300K ppl. And most places its worse. So irrespective of how sophisticated and nuanced the law gets that becomes a bottleneck.

Something for the imaginative HN crowd to attack.

Yup. There are myriad logistics issues at play here. The tricky part is regulatory and legislative side of it. That's where the politics come in.

This seems a non sequitur to me in that it is not the cost of the time in court that is the barrier. I'm aware of no court costs that are ruinous by any stretch of the imagination. (E.g., filing fees, documentation access costs).

The de-facto necessities to succeed however, e.g., access to well-organized and consumable cross-referenced case law, the requisite knowledge of courtroom procedure, knowing what to file, by when, and what things mean without significant training or oversight of a retained lawyer; and that's where your issue comes in.

You could make the argument that an infinite number of courts and judges would bring the cost down; but I'm not convinced it would. As you'd still have the exponential case law parsing cost outpacing your availability of lawyers.

There comes a point where stare decisis and it's potential infinitive of cases depending on the craftyness of your lawyer at painting a distinction without a difference, and judges willing to buy it, where the costs seem pretty much guaranteed to spiral out of control.

Lack of resourcing is absolutely costing us particularly IT. The lack of free access to proceedings data, the manual filling and processing without ease of access . The lack of access to lawyers and judges alike make them expensive.

This is by design in all professions which requires memberships in addition to a degree like lawyers and accountants as compared to engineers.

If banks still did banking on ledger books only the rich will be banked as it was until recent times.

To scale your ability to serve is closly related to cost of service. It is applicable whether it is SaaS or rocket science or legal system

Yes... but also no.

Again, the problem comes in in the fundamentals of velocity of information propagation, of which only half is open to unrestricted scalability. Namely, documents can be propagated at the speed of light. Understanding cannot. You can put every document exactly where I need it as soon as it is accessible, but unless I've had enough immersion in the jargon and specific ways of life of the profession, I'm going to need time to absorb and reckon what to do with it, and where to go next. Even if I do know what to look for, good luck hitting up any database of well cross-referenced case law without paying an exorbitant fee due to the nature of the returns of the profession, and the essentially captive audience to it. Most of those data sources areas fundamental to law as Machinery's Handbook to Machining, yet its locked up behind more imposing barriers to entry than Fort Knox; fiscal, temporal, and cultural.

Short of a periodic collapse and simplification of case law such that the entire field can become more accessible so something less than a Guild/Cartel of highly exclusive barristers, I'm not seeing a fundamental opportunity to change things for the better.

To flesh out my thoughts, there are publicly accessible law libraries you can go to for working through the up to date case law by checking the registers and what not, but from my understanding this is a far slower process than using the tools most practicing attorneys pay rather large recurring access fees to. If there is a lawyer about, feel free to correct me, but I believe Westlaw is one, LexisNexis is another I think? It's been a while since I was deep in this vertical of research. What I do remember is that the difference in efficiency between someone who does have access to one of those systems vs. Someone who doesn't is essentially the difference between someone armed with Google Case Law Edition vs. someone working out of a card catalog. You can get an order of magnitude higher discoverability leading to potential alternate avenues for legal construction with one over the other. You can also get an idea of what approach any defense or counterpart might make by researching what your opponent would want since you're both working out of the same b o st of case law.

If you're just looking to do one case and be done, the law library may work. If you're in court with any regularity, the rest of the profession has made your decision for you, and it's time to pony up for access to the big boy's toolset.

Law that most people need is not number theory or quantam mechanics that it has to be super complicated to understand.

The social contract I have with society is not I that follow arbitrary rules I don't understand in return for the benefits the society gives me.

A breonna taylor situation would not be legal in any sane society yet it is today, because the people running the judicial system make laws inaccessible and self protecting.

Complicated laws and regulations need enforcement and lawyers . You legalize alcohol, FBI needs weed laws and civil rights to keep their jobs. You legalize weed , they need something else.

Today the DoJ will charge you by the page to get access to legal documents. What else are we paying tax for !!

If it is too complicated for only professionals to understand then needs to be simplified. You are right we need fundamental simplication and radical change .

From the Justinian times codification and simplification of law has always been a mark of good civilizations. Asoka put stone pillars so people can know the law. There are countless examples. If ten commandments needed lawyers it would never have worked .

It will only happen if we doing something about it .

Is the court itself the limiting cost for litigation, or is it the lawyers representing the parties?

Well if you are facing the government your adversary has practically limitless time and money...

I'm glad I live in a country were lawyers still have some professional honor to take on cases that don't pay. But they have to subsidize poor clients with rich ones.

Right, but that's only really a problem because affording a lawyer for any amount of time is ruinously expensive. If lawyers were cheaper (or litigation much faster), even fighting the government would be affordable, even if it would be an awful experience in other, non-financial ways.

Pro-bono stuff is a great and honorable tradition, but it's not enough. I worry about any system that depends on poor citizens being sympathetic enough to receive free legal representation as a charity from otherwise unaffordably expensive lawyers. It's clearly superior to locking all poor citizens away from legal representation, but it's not anywhere close to sufficient.

That doesn't make sense to me, such system would obviously get a percentage from each settlement/fine (e.g. 10%) to pay for the costs of running such system, the big cases would be the ones keeping the system afloat.

I'm personally not looking forward to Judger - Uber, but for Justice.

While I get the joke, I think this is basically binding arbitration, which is a thing. It has its own set of upsides and downsides.

You'll enjoy _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ then, in the way someone else might enjoy a slasher flick.

as it happens that is one of the Heinlein books I consider worthwhile.

Something tells me that out of the three new apps, Judger, Rural Juror, and Executioner, the executioner app will be the most popular.

> Where I live there is like 1 Judge for 300K ppl. And most places its worse.

Out of interest, here's a map of judges per capita. It seems the situation in the US is especially bleak among western countries.

https://en.actualitix.com/doc/maps/wld/world-map-professiona...

From my brief googling, this seems misleading. We have only ~1,700 Federal judges in the USA, but our parallel state system has ~30,000 judges, which are uncounted by your linked graph.

https://iaals.du.edu/sites/default/files/documents/publicati...

Well that explains! I was wondering what's going on there.

From my perspective, I find it hard to approach without addressing the monopoly role the state plays in dispensing justice. Maybe others can add their thoughts about how to reform the current system towards these ends.

That said, a privatized law system could potentially provide greater competition and lower costs overall.

"Customary Law With Private Means of Resolving Disputes and Dispensing Justice: A Description Of a Modern System of Law and Order Without State Coercion"

https://cdn.mises.org/9_2_2_0.pdf

Isn't commercial arbitration basically a privatized law system?

Yes, for example both the employer and maid could sign a contract for arbitration. Insurance schemes and protections for both parties could be part of this.

How it would work in practice would depend upon the specifics of the contracts and the quality of the arbitration. There's potential for both positive and negative outcomes. Ideally competition would create an equilibrium which benefits both parties.

There's a very pessimistic, knee-jerk interpretation I'd like to address. Outcomes are in no way guaranteed to go one way or the other in this hypothetical.

Better protections for workers would allow a larger pool of potential hires. This in turn could create a cost incentive for robust worker protection and liability. Insurers may guarantee the employer or employee by screening for potential misconduct.

This is not to say that it would be a perfect system, but that there is a potential for incentives to work in both directions. With enough scrutiny by brighter minds than my own a workable framework might emerge.

Singapore has a government-run mediation centre for employment-related claims [1], and unresolved cases can advance to an employment tribunal [2] (where no lawyers are allowed) after.

The difference in this case were the criminal charges. Like in most jurisdictions in the world, it would be pretty foolish of someone to represent themselves without being trained in criminal law and court procedure — especially when a failed attempt doesn't mean bankruptcy, but incarceration.

[1] https://www.tal.sg/tadm

[2] https://www.statecourts.gov.sg/cws/ECT/Pages/An-Overview-of-...

In the German system, civil litigation is a lot faster and less expensive, despite having the same level of public satisfaction as much more expensive countries [1]

I'm no expert on their system, but there's some regulation of lawyers' fees ('RVG') and also a different system of law - among other things, they do not recognise the concept of precedent, making rulings on statute alone - which means questions of law are much more easily resolved.

Of course, replacing a country's entire justice system would be politically complex in the extreme.

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1641554

Economic apartheid. Justice isn't blind, some people only pretend it's a meritocracy. Just ask Chris Hedges about the students he teaches in prison who are mostly black and poor who will die there because they couldn't afford decent lawyers. The US, for example, has the highest incarceration rate in the world of every country except Seychelles and has for-profit prisons, immigration detention centers, and legal slavery of convicts working for corporations and as firefighters for slave wages.

> I've heard of this problem existing in every country. The legal system only works if you have the money to bankroll your case.

To be honest, I don't think it's the case where I live ( Belgium - Europe).

> The most common pro bono cases are asylum cases, family law cases (such as divorce, alimentation or visitation rights cases) and criminal law cases. A special branch of the criminal law cases is the so-called Salduz permanency.

https://www.crowell.com/Locations/Brussels/Pro-Bono-System-i...

Is there any country that does it right? Meaning one where all lawyers are public servants (e.g. get a fixed monthly salary from the government) or something similar?

I'd like a lawyer who pays attention to my case, not one who draws a check no matter what he does.

Statistically speaking, you can't afford to pay one, so - too bad.

I've been wondering about that. If there's no such thing as a private lawyer, all defenders are public defenders... would that work? The law should be equally accessible to all, and making the law ever more complicated only exacerbates the problem with no potential of getting better.

That wouldn't really help. Even if only publicly-funded lawyers could represent criminal defendants (which I don't think anyone actually wants), those with financial means would be able to employ an army of experts, researchers, investigators, etc. to aid in their case, in addition to the biases juries have toward those with means, and political sway the elite hold. And if you somehow prevented that inequality, you'd just drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator, and all the more people would be harmed by unjust prosecution.

Every criminal defendant (at least for felonies or serious misdemeanors) in the US has access to a government-funded lawyer, if they can't afford their own. There are over 15,000 public defenders in the US, who get a fixed salary as you mention. They are often overworked, and have limited time and resources to help the people they defend, but they help countless people every day. I'd like to improve the funding and the number of public defenders available (and of course decrease the number of people on trial for nonsense). I'm glad the system exists. It's helped friends and family, with largely positive outcomes that I don't think would have been any better with an expensive private lawyer. When it comes to more serious crimes, you probably don't want to be in that situation.

> And if you somehow prevented that inequality, you'd just drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator, and all the more people would be harmed by unjust prosecution.

Saying it would be an unjust prosecution should include something to back it up; the most logical outcome is that if both lawyers are just as skilled the little edge they may have by actually having a innocent defendant -or a gilty prosecuted- would help get better justice overall, I don't think I could even be persuaded otherwise until I can read about a real world nation where such system was tried and failed.

I sat on a jury with a public defender. He ran circles around the prosecutor. It was pretty interesting to see and completely unexpected based on what I've heard about public defenders.

One relatively easy fix is to bump up the budget for public defenders, including a decent pay increase. You'll attract better talent and have more of them so they aren't as overworked.

You do not want lawyers on the government payroll. That would destroy their ability to fight for citizens against the State.

Then those cases should be the exception to allow private lawyers rather than the rule. Another solution would be that the public lawyers should have protections against any repercussion from the state.

One tantalizing improvement would be if legal fees were pooled and split evenly between sides, so long as the initial case had reasonable standing.

This seems like it would be the same outcome. One rich and one poor and split it evenly and it will always end badly for the poor person even if they win.

I think the idea is that the required contribution is means tested with assistance where appropriate, and that both mandatory and optional excess contributions must be shared.

There are variants of this that could work much better than the current system used in most western nations.

Today, if I can spend $1K on legal fees and want to sue someone with a $1M budget, I'll just lose. To compete with that, I'd have to pony up $1M up front and hope I win to recoup my costs afterwards.

The alternative model is this:

Step 1) A lawsuit is filed

Step 2) Each party puts double the money they are willing to spend into the "pot". So if you have a $1M budget, you have to put $2M in. The counter-party willing to spend only $1K puts $2K in.

Step 3) The court takes the available funds from the pot evenly to the two participants, giving each one the same amount as the larger "willing to pay" amount specified.

So in this example: The poor guy seeking justice spends gets a refund of $1K (spending a net of $1K) and his lawyers receive $1M from the pot. The rich arsehole also gets $1K back and his lawyers get $1M from the pot.

I'm not saying this is a perfect system, but it would allow poor people to sue rich people and not be at a massive disadvantage.

Which is why nothing like this has any chance of happening.

No, it would let rich people just create confusing business documentation then bid 0 dollars and choke out every case at the discovery stage.

No thanks.

Why would you bid any amount at all? I don't understand why the rich person would be incentivized to bid. Let both bid zero and skip the lawyers.

And wouldn't this be a great way for lawyers to earn lots of fees by encouraging poor people to sue rich people.

Much simpler is simply get rid of personal lawyers. The adversarial model is not the only option. You can do like small claims court and have the judge act as a truth finder.

The court could hire a lawyer if the judge feels that assistance is needed (for complex cases).

Today, the poor side must bear (or float) the cost of their lawyer, but the rich side has unbounded ability to fight it.

Under a pooled system, you could ante in 10k and if the opposition needs more money to defend themselves than 5k, they have to give you monetary ammunition as well! This prevents being nuked into settlement by being outspent, despite an otherwise sound claim. (Which definitely happens right now)

This is how the divorce lawsuit in America works.

Typically a husband must pay a high powered lawyer for his wife, if his salary is higher.

wouldnt corps just hire armies of lawyers and then demand that the other party cover half the cost?

My interpretation is that for every dollar each side spends on legal fees related to a case, they provide some amount (let's say $0.50) to an escrow account that will be given to the opposition (separate from any awards in the ruling) if they win the case to refund their expenses, or returned to the spender if not.

Some potential difficulties could arise in separating legal fees related to a case from general legal work being done by lawyers on retainer. Furthermore, this would still require both sides to front the money for the case, although if a lawyer thought they had a strong case, they could take the case on incentive for a poor client.

I believe what hes saying is this: Bigcorp wants to spend 200k on lawyers, i want to spend 5000. so we combine them to be 205k, and we each get 102500$ to spend on lawyers. It would be an interesting situation though since the person spending less isn't really incentivized to spend anything at all and instead leach of the other.

At that point though, bigcorp might look at the case say “F-it, let’s move on with our lives.”

Which billionaire?

Peter Thiel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollea_v._Gawker

Thiel had a kind of entrepreneurial attack against Gawker. He bankrolled several lawsuits, hoping that one would stick. He basically had infinite money to try for a win. Eventually this one stuck.

I do think Hogan could have afforded his suit, but probably wouldn't have bothered. The lawsuit lead to the typical Streisand effect, no one would have heard about this until it went big, so many people like me wouldn't have heard about a famous person's sex tape with disreputable characters involved without an endless lawsuit.

Gawker was a fault for showing someone's sex tape, which had apparently leaked and was quite likely shown against the people in it's wishes. Separately from the terribleness of that event, extremely rich people can afford endless lawsuits until something hits, they can overwhelm regular people, which is also a bad thing.

I think the key component for this kind of tactic to work is have your target be Gawker. The New York Times has made bigger and more powerful enemies than Peter Thiel, as have many other less-universally-hated media companies.

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