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One of the big dividers that I see between the "haves" and the "have-nots" is the ability to afford legal representation in civil cases. For criminal cases, th

One of the big dividers that I see between the "haves" and the "have-nots" is the ability to afford legal representation in civil cases. For criminal cases, there are public defenders, but for civil cases, I don't believe there is any such thing? If you can afford a lawyer and your opponent can't, there is a lot that you can do to bully your opponent into making it not worth it for them to fight the case. One of my controversial opinions is that -- if we can enable easy access to AI, then we can give provide much broader access to legal or medical advice. Maybe not the best, maybe not always right, but even if it's average-ish advice, then I think that could often be better than nothing at all. We can't completely prevent bad people from doing bad things with AI, but I see this as one of the clear ways that we could do some really good things with AI.

bee_rider 7mo ago
I’m sure this is true to some extent, about the lawyers. But also, I wonder (aka I don’t have any data to back this up, it is just based on random stories I’ve heard) to what extent people “I’m right but can’t afford the lawyer time” as a sort of pride maintaining excuse. Or to what extent lawyers use that as a soft-no to reject clients that they don’t think have a strong enough case. Which isn’t to say the world is fundamentally just. Just, in some case the laws are legitimately stacked in favor of the big guys, or you sign a contract without carefully reading it, etc etc.
- cogman10 7mo ago
  $50k is going to be on the cheap side for any case that ultimately involves the court. Anytime a case goes to trial, you can easily be looking at $1M+. There's a reason companies keep lawyers on staff. It's a whole lot cheaper to give a lawyer an annual salary than it is to hire out a lawfirm as the standard rates for law-firms are insanely high. On the low end, $150/hour. On the high end, $400. With things like 15 minute minimums (so that one draft response ends up costing $100). Take a deposition for 3 hours, with 2 lawyers, that'll be $2400. Not being able to afford a lawyer is no joke.
  - freejazz 7mo ago
    In house counsel aren't doing trials
    - cogman10 7mo ago
      Correct, they are handling everything up until the point where you start a trial (including finding the legal firm and spot checking their work).
      - freejazz 7mo ago
        Doubt that. There's no point of bringing in a litigator on day 1 of a trial save for the fact they are probably a better public speaker. Whatever needed to get done needed to be done well before trial started.
        cogman10 7mo ago
        Sure there is, if you can send back a strong response to a challenge, a potential litigant may back down ultimately saving money. On staff legal council is there to be able to make the call when a more expensive firm should be hired and brought in. There's a lot of BS lawsuits, however, that flow through. For example, every software company that gets big enough will likely get sued for some BS patent infringement. Having on staff legal will be able to make the call of "yeah, you should just give them $10k to go away". That's a lot cheaper than hiring a firm to come in and then tell you "Yeah, you should give them $10k to go away". Particularly for a business, it takes years before any case gets close to going to trial. Plenty of time for your council to make the determination on when bigger guns should be brought in.
        freejazz 7mo ago
        >Sure there is, if you can send back a strong response to a challenge, a potential litigant may back down ultimately saving money. Do you litigate? Hiring a new attorney to show up day of trial only communicates to the other side that it's clown-city. >On staff legal council is there to be able to make the call when a more expensive firm should be hired and brought in. There's a lot of BS lawsuits, however, that flow through. For example, every software company that gets big enough will likely get sued for some BS patent infringement. Having on staff legal will be able to make the call of "yeah, you should just give them $10k to go away". That's a lot cheaper than hiring a firm to come in and then tell you "Yeah, you should give them $10k to go away". Do you litigate? Do you know what's involved to actually get to a trial? Let alone the day of trial? In house is going to take depositions and brief summary judgment? In house is going to prepare the pre trial order? Get proposed jury instructions? Again, do you litigate? >Particularly for a business, it takes years before any case gets close to going to trial. Plenty of time for your council to make the determination on when bigger guns should be brought in. You said, in particular, "up until the point where you start a trial."
- terminalshort 7mo ago
  In my experience lawyers will tell you very directly when you don't have a good case, or if you do have a good case but it's not worth pursuing it (the most likely scenario). Also, the time that I did pursue my case, it took around $50,000 to the lawyers before I was able to convince the defendant to settle (for a large multiple of that $50K). If the other side had been more stubborn it would have been around $100K to take it to trial. If I hadn't had the money to pay the lawyer I would have been SOL, and most people don't have $50K to spend on an uncertain outcome like that. So “I’m right but can’t afford the lawyer time” is a very real scenario.
  - cogman10 7mo ago
    That $100k is also on the cheap side. If the other side has a lawyer and a lot of money to burn, they can easily hike that way up. Filing a billion motions that your lawyer has to respond to, deposing everyone you've ever met, going after every document you've ever looked at. The more money someone has, the easier it is to make you spend more money, even if you are right.
    - terminalshort 7mo ago
      Right. My case was a very simple contract dispute with very little discovery and only a couple of people to depose, so I was lucky there. And the other side did have more money than me, but not so much that they could burn several hundred K on it without feeling it.
  - chimeracoder 7mo ago
    > So “I’m right but can’t afford the lawyer time” is a very real scenario. For most cases like the ones we're talking about (NYC unlawful eviction and/or tenant harassment), if you have a good case, you don't have to pay up-front. A lawyer will take it on contingency and get paid by the defendant if you win. In addition, there are also plenty of free legal resources dedicated to this exact topic as well.
    - terminalshort 7mo ago
cogman10 7mo ago
IMO, this screams the need for both tort reforms and something like a nationalized representation system. Perhaps something like a standard set of filings for a given case. Maybe automated rulings on less consequential motions. Maybe some sort of hard limits on the amount of billable hours a law-firm can work on a case. Anti-slapp laws for sure. Like, for example, maybe we allow a total of 100 billable hours worked, with an additional 10 billable hours allowed per appeal. The goal there being that you force lawyers and lawfirms to actually focus on the most important aspects of a case and not waste everyone's time and money filling motions for stuff you are allowed to get, but ultimately has 1% impact on the case. Perhaps you could even carve out a "if both sides agree, then you can extend the billable hours". You could also have penalties for a side that doesn't respond. For example, if you depose them and they fail to follow the orders then they lose billable hours while you get them credited back. The main goal here being avoiding both wasting a bunch of court time on a case but also stopping a rich person that can afford an army of lawyers from using that advantage to drive their opponent bankrupt with a sea of minor motions.

bee_rider 7mo ago

I’m sure this is true to some extent, about the lawyers. But also, I wonder (aka I don’t have any data to back this up, it is just based on random stories I’ve heard) to what extent people “I’m right but can’t afford the lawyer time” as a sort of pride maintaining excuse. Or to what extent lawyers use that as a soft-no to reject clients that they don’t think have a strong enough case. Which isn’t to say the world is fundamentally just. Just, in some case the laws are legitimately stacked in favor of the big guys, or you sign a contract without carefully reading it, etc etc.

cogman10 7mo ago
$50k is going to be on the cheap side for any case that ultimately involves the court. Anytime a case goes to trial, you can easily be looking at $1M+. There's a reason companies keep lawyers on staff. It's a whole lot cheaper to give a lawyer an annual salary than it is to hire out a lawfirm as the standard rates for law-firms are insanely high. On the low end, $150/hour. On the high end, $400. With things like 15 minute minimums (so that one draft response ends up costing $100). Take a deposition for 3 hours, with 2 lawyers, that'll be $2400. Not being able to afford a lawyer is no joke.
- freejazz 7mo ago
  In house counsel aren't doing trials
  - cogman10 7mo ago
    Correct, they are handling everything up until the point where you start a trial (including finding the legal firm and spot checking their work).
    - freejazz 7mo ago
      Doubt that. There's no point of bringing in a litigator on day 1 of a trial save for the fact they are probably a better public speaker. Whatever needed to get done needed to be done well before trial started.
      - cogman10 7mo ago
        Sure there is, if you can send back a strong response to a challenge, a potential litigant may back down ultimately saving money. On staff legal council is there to be able to make the call when a more expensive firm should be hired and brought in. There's a lot of BS lawsuits, however, that flow through. For example, every software company that gets big enough will likely get sued for some BS patent infringement. Having on staff legal will be able to make the call of "yeah, you should just give them $10k to go away". That's a lot cheaper than hiring a firm to come in and then tell you "Yeah, you should give them $10k to go away". Particularly for a business, it takes years before any case gets close to going to trial. Plenty of time for your council to make the determination on when bigger guns should be brought in.
        freejazz 7mo ago
        >Sure there is, if you can send back a strong response to a challenge, a potential litigant may back down ultimately saving money. Do you litigate? Hiring a new attorney to show up day of trial only communicates to the other side that it's clown-city. >On staff legal council is there to be able to make the call when a more expensive firm should be hired and brought in. There's a lot of BS lawsuits, however, that flow through. For example, every software company that gets big enough will likely get sued for some BS patent infringement. Having on staff legal will be able to make the call of "yeah, you should just give them $10k to go away". That's a lot cheaper than hiring a firm to come in and then tell you "Yeah, you should give them $10k to go away". Do you litigate? Do you know what's involved to actually get to a trial? Let alone the day of trial? In house is going to take depositions and brief summary judgment? In house is going to prepare the pre trial order? Get proposed jury instructions? Again, do you litigate? >Particularly for a business, it takes years before any case gets close to going to trial. Plenty of time for your council to make the determination on when bigger guns should be brought in. You said, in particular, "up until the point where you start a trial."
terminalshort 7mo ago
In my experience lawyers will tell you very directly when you don't have a good case, or if you do have a good case but it's not worth pursuing it (the most likely scenario). Also, the time that I did pursue my case, it took around $50,000 to the lawyers before I was able to convince the defendant to settle (for a large multiple of that $50K). If the other side had been more stubborn it would have been around $100K to take it to trial. If I hadn't had the money to pay the lawyer I would have been SOL, and most people don't have $50K to spend on an uncertain outcome like that. So “I’m right but can’t afford the lawyer time” is a very real scenario.
- cogman10 7mo ago
  That $100k is also on the cheap side. If the other side has a lawyer and a lot of money to burn, they can easily hike that way up. Filing a billion motions that your lawyer has to respond to, deposing everyone you've ever met, going after every document you've ever looked at. The more money someone has, the easier it is to make you spend more money, even if you are right.
  - terminalshort 7mo ago
    Right. My case was a very simple contract dispute with very little discovery and only a couple of people to depose, so I was lucky there. And the other side did have more money than me, but not so much that they could burn several hundred K on it without feeling it.
- chimeracoder 7mo ago
  > So “I’m right but can’t afford the lawyer time” is a very real scenario. For most cases like the ones we're talking about (NYC unlawful eviction and/or tenant harassment), if you have a good case, you don't have to pay up-front. A lawyer will take it on contingency and get paid by the defendant if you win. In addition, there are also plenty of free legal resources dedicated to this exact topic as well.
  - terminalshort 7mo ago

cogman10 7mo ago

IMO, this screams the need for both tort reforms and something like a nationalized representation system. Perhaps something like a standard set of filings for a given case. Maybe automated rulings on less consequential motions. Maybe some sort of hard limits on the amount of billable hours a law-firm can work on a case. Anti-slapp laws for sure. Like, for example, maybe we allow a total of 100 billable hours worked, with an additional 10 billable hours allowed per appeal. The goal there being that you force lawyers and lawfirms to actually focus on the most important aspects of a case and not waste everyone's time and money filling motions for stuff you are allowed to get, but ultimately has 1% impact on the case. Perhaps you could even carve out a "if both sides agree, then you can extend the billable hours". You could also have penalties for a side that doesn't respond. For example, if you depose them and they fail to follow the orders then they lose billable hours while you get them credited back. The main goal here being avoiding both wasting a bunch of court time on a case but also stopping a rich person that can afford an army of lawyers from using that advantage to drive their opponent bankrupt with a sea of minor motions.