Just Lawyers: Regulation and Access to Justice

Just Lawyers proposes a model for the regulation and organization of lawyers, guided by an ideal of access to justice. It is grounded in empirical analysis of why people complain about lawyers, the nature of existing legal institutions, and the ethical ideals of the profession. Parker weaves the normative theory of deliberative democracy with the empirical law and society tradition of research on the limits and possibilities of law. She shows that access to justice can only occur in the interaction between courtroom justice, informal everyday justice, and social movement politics. Lawyers' justice should educate people's justice to improve the justice quality of everyday relationships and transactions, while community concerns (including community access to justice concerns) should reshape lawyers' regulation, organization, and practices to improve substantive justice. Just Lawyers shows how legal proffesionalism can only be revitalized through the reform of access to justice beyond lawyers.