Desert relief

Maybe it’s time for a legal draft.

I know this will never happen and lawyers would be outraged by the thought, but consider another question: If rural areas and public agencies are considered “legal deserts” that need lawyers, does it make sense to send them the least qualified lawyers possible?

Is that helpful?

Is mediocre lawyering better than no lawyering? I wonder how public defender offices and death row clients feel about this.

I bring this up because the Arizona Supreme Court has issued an administrative order creating a program for lawyers who just barely missed passing the state’s bar exam. They can still practice law if they sign up to serve in a rural area or public agency for two years under a lawyer with at least five years of experience.

The rationale for this, as explained by the state’s chief justice in a news release, is that “Arizona is not only a real desert, but also a  ‘legal desert.’” Apparently, the problem is “especially acute” in rural areas and public agencies are hurting too.

Let’s pretend there’s no question about whether bar exams actually predict how successful, honest or competent a lawyer is going to be. (I have my doubts — I had no trouble passing the bar exam and I wouldn’t hire me. All I’d do is make fun of my clients.)

I can still see some pretty obvious problems with this. First off, if a rural area is a legal desert, where are you going to get the experienced lawyers to do the supervising? How many near-miss passers can one of those rare rural lawyers handle?

There doesn't seem to be any mention of payment for the supervising lawyers in the order. Will there be volunteers? Is the state Supreme Court going to make them do it just because they’re in a desert?

And if you’re someone who just barely missed passing the bar, wouldn’t it make more sense to try passing it again before committing to a couple of years in a pasture?

The news release, by the way, notes that while the minimum passing score in Arizona on the Uniform Bar Exam is 270, it’s only 260 in Utah and New Mexico. So every year, the chief justice noted, people who scored between 260 and 269 move to Utah or New Mexico.

Hmm, interesting choice. Head for a farm and be a provisional lawyer or cross a state line and be a regular lawyer without an obligation?

What exactly is the incentive here? Cows to pet?

Arizona may want to rethink the carrot here.

The only rational solution to this problem is to make everyone who passes a bar exam serve a year or two in a legal desert.

You’ll get smart people representing the downtrodden (or not-downtrodden farmers) and new lawyers will get experience litigating over whether they should be made to do this.

Random sentences. For your entertainment pleasure, I bring you random sentences completely out of context from recent court rulings to tantalize and entertain you. The facts in most of these cases are really messed up.

From a federal court in Dallas in Freeman v. Park: “This is a cookie-cutter employment dispute with a fact pattern that’s anything but cookie-cutter.”

So it’s not a cookie-cutter dispute?

From the Utah Court of Appeals in Richmond v. Bateman: “Marlene managed to withdraw several hundred thousand dollars from Jess’s bank account … after which she placed the cash in a wheelbarrow and burned it.”

Yes, a woman with money to burn.

From the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Hodges v. Meletis, a suit brought by a prison inmate: “Though he does not allege that he contracted COVID-19 during this time, he claims that the facility’s decision to permit him to volunteer — resulting in his exposure to the disease — constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.”

People need to be protected from themselves.

The prisoner, by the way, was represented by the Career Programming Chair at the Washington University School of Law and a bunch of students. The students may want to consider whether they were being cruelly and unusually punished.

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