Almost every morning, staffers at Greater Boston Legal Services arrive at work to find a line of people waiting on the street outside their offices. These people are there because they need help: some because they’re being evicted, others because they’re chasing down child support payments, still others because they’re filing for divorce.
Lawyers are expensive, and for millions of low-income people across the United States, nonprofits like Greater Boston Legal Services offer the best—perhaps the only—chance at professional help. Staffed by civic-minded attorneys and paid for with public money and private donations, these organizations represent our society’s primary mechanism for making sure that when it comes to civil proceedings, all people, including the very poor, are treated equally before the law.
Comments
The article neglects to say that despite misgivings GBLS participated in the housing study. The article is written in a way that presumes a dispute where there really is none. If real people's lives were not in the balance research away.
This article overlooks some key points:
1. Most everyone knows or should know there is no such thing as "equal justice" or "access to justice" or "due process" under the law. It's pretty simple, no money - no justice.
2. Based on my direct knowledge, most bench decisions out of certain courts are based on the "rule of like," not the "rule of law." For example, the Suffolk County Boston Municipal Court assigned a convicted felon to adjudicate small claims cases and despite evidence in the pro se litigants favor, this convicted felon "adjudicator" gave the benefit of the doubt to the attorney whose key witness manufactured false evidence specifically for the hearing and lied under oath. If equal justice existed, the "doctrine of clean hands" should have automatically decided in favor of the pro se litigant. He lost his case. Even worse, his request for reconsideration to the court chain of command (Daniel Hogan, Judge Charles Johnson, Chief Judge Lynda Connolly and senior officials of the Administrative Office of the Trial Court did not seem to matter.
3. Pro se litigants with verified facts, corroborated by clear and convincing evidence have almost no chance in the court system when going up against an attorney.
4. Despite clear and egregious violations on the part of some attorneys, mosty judges' decisions are favorable to attoneys, which only proves that judges can and will do whatever they want, without fear of appropriate oversight or accountability.
5. The Board of Bar Overseers answers alomost to no one and in some cases their actions are tantamount to allowing certain predatory attorneys to steal large sums of money from their clients.
Unfortunately, like other state institutions which have been in the news, the court system in Massachusetts is crumbling and is in need of complete reform, not more money.
dougkinan@yahoo.com