Access to Justice

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2023

A Mountain To Climb: The Inaccessibility Of Rural Courts

By Jack Karp

Unlike the shortage of attorneys available to represent clients in rural areas, experts say there are an adequate number of courthouses to serve people living in remote areas of the country. It's getting to them that's the problem.

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How Trauma-Informed Lawyering Can Help Clients Heal

By Daniel Connolly

The story of an Olympic gymnast-turned-lawyer illustrates the emotional and psychological challenges that trauma survivors can face, how these challenges can play out in litigation, and how people who have experienced trauma can bounce back.

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Pro Bono Spotlight

Gibson Dunn Helps Vindicate LA Reporter After Protest Arrest

By James Mills

Three years after a reporter with the Los Angeles-area National Public Radio affiliate was tackled by sheriff's deputies and arrested while covering a protest, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP has helped secure a $700,000 settlement that the firm is hailing as a win for press freedom.

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Executions Concentrated In 5 States As Fairness Doubts Grow

By Marco Poggio

Only a handful of states executed people in 2023 as more Americans think the death penalty is carried out unfairly than fairly for the first time, according to a year-end report released Friday by the Death Penalty Information Center.

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Gap In Access To Legal Assistance Remains Wide, ABA Finds

By Marco Poggio

The United States is home to the largest number of attorneys in the world, and it has by far the highest number of lawyers per capita, yet they are mostly concentrated in a few urban areas, leaving entire swaths of the country as legal deserts, according to a new report by the American Bar Association.

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Top State Judges To Tackle Public Interest 'Lawyer Deserts'

By Jack Karp

A new committee composed of state Supreme Court chief justices and others will examine why fewer attorneys are going into public interest law, as well as the state of legal education and bar admissions processes more generally, according to an announcement Monday.

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Plaintiffs Want NYC Jails Handed Over To Federal Receiver

By Marco Poggio

Plaintiffs in a decadelong class action challenging brutality by staff at New York City jails have asked a federal judge to appoint a federal receiver to take the helm of the troubled city jail system following record violence at its facilities, attorneys confirmed on Monday.

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Perspectives

6th Circ. Case Eases Path For Some Excessive Force Claims

The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to hear Fox v. Campbell, leaving in place the Sixth Circuit’s holding that excessive force claims based on police shootings can be founded on the Fourth Amendment even if no one is hit by gunfire — which will be helpful for some civil rights litigants, says Sharon Fairley at the University of Chicago Law School.

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Perspectives

In Culley, Justices Unlikely To Set New Forfeiture Standards

As the U.S. Supreme Court considers Culley v. Marshall — a case with the potential to reshape civil asset forfeiture practices — the justices' recent comments at oral argument suggest that, while some of them may be concerned about civil forfeiture abuse, they are unlikely to significantly change the status quo, say attorneys at Jackson Walker.

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