Jed Rakoff

being a criminal defense lawyer for indigent defendants in another district, another district so there'd be no conflicts.

They would see things from both sides.

Having seen it both as a prosecutor and as a defense, I think it makes a huge difference in how fair you are when you can see both sides.

It would also cause prosecutors to be much more careful in taking the evidence provided to them by the police.

The police are 99 percent of the cases honest.

There are some rotten apples, but that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the fact that they only see one side of things and they only report one side of things.

And therefore, the prosecutor is getting a skewed view, which could be counteracted by the prosecutor saying, how about that other suspect?

Yes.

Real briefly, we've talked so much about the criminal justice system, but it should be of equal concern to people that everyday folks can't get into court and can't have a lawyer if they're dragged into court, even in everyday civil matters.

So the statistics are that 20 years ago, if you were an individual who was either bringing a case as a plaintiff or were forced into a case as a defendant, you had a lawyer in almost every case.

Now, two thirds of those people don't have lawyers in housing court and family court, which are the two courts where the most people get involved on civil matters in some states, not all in some states is as much as 90 percent of the individuals don't have lawyers.

And statistics, again, are overwhelming.

If you have a lawyer, you do much better.

as you would expect.

And if you don't have a lawyer, there are many reasons why this has come about.

Lawyers have priced themselves out of that market.

Their market has become the market of corporations and rich folks.

There has been a decline in things like labor unions, which used to supply lawyers to their membership.

There's been a push supported by the Supreme Court to force cases to go to arbitration rather than to go to court.