shlep: the Self-Help Law ExPress

    [pre-launch status, as we search for a shlep team — can you contribute?]  

Bar associations can play a major role helping or hindering the growth of the self-help law movement, and shlep hopes to cover developments within the organized bar that relate to achieving better access to justice and legal services for all Americans through self-help resources. As you can see from two of the links in our sidebar’s Self-Help Gateways collection (i.e., the ABA’s ProSe/Unbundling webpage and FindLegalHelp.org), the American Bar Association has been a positive force. But, we’re afraid the same cannot be said yet for many state and local bar associations.

For example, despite a few bright spots, ethicalEsq was pretty cranky back in August 2003, in a posting entitled “Finding Self-Help Info on Bar Ass’n Websites (Good Luck!).” Your Editor’s alter ego found that “It is rare to find a bar group that lets the public know about viable alternatives to hiring a lawyer for solving legal problems” and that the consistent Message from bar associations to consumers is “If you can afford a lawyer you should hire one. Only the indigent cannot afford a lawyer”. In numerous posts, ethicalEsq took bar groups — e.g., in Illinois and Maryland, New York and Ohio, Massachusetts — to task for obstructionist attitudes toward self-help law (including reform of small claims courts), while noting the occasional exception.

  [pre-launch posting]

Self-Help Law deserves its own weblog.  It is too important a right for consumers, a vital movement, and a growing virtual and realworld reality, to be outside the spotlight of the blogosphere and the weblogger community. (See Movement/ Shmovement below, plus our About page)  Indeed, if weblogs are even half as important in the world of legal services as everybody* says, it may be malpractice for consumer advocates, proponents of universal access to justice, law-and-technology gurus, or law firm management mavens to start the day without seeking a weblog dose of pro se and self-help news and punditry.

  That’s why your host (David Giacalone, of ethicalEsq and f/k//a) has been constructing shlep over the past few weeks, in this corner of the blogosphere.   If you haven’t yet realized the need for a self-help law weblog, I hope the prior postings at this site (just scroll down the page), along with the resources you can already find in the SideBar, will convince you, too.   With hundreds of court-based and private self-representation programs in existence, commissions in most states to promote access to justice for all, and an enormous unmet need for legal services and information by the American consumer, there is both plenty of news (see, e.g., the HALT eJournal and the SelfHelpSupport News Page) and plenty of room for constructive commentary. 

So, you might ask, why is shlep still in its “pre-launch” stage?  Quite simply: because I can’t do it alone.  There are many reasons, including those discussed at my original weblog ethicalEsq.  Most important is the fact that I do not have the expertise and insight, much less the energy, to do justice to this important topic.  Frankly, I’d like to post no more than twice a week to shlep, while sharing the task of making this a daily publication with other informed and committed contributors.

   Therefore, shlep is seeking co-editors to contribute regularly to its content and help guide its construction and evolution.  [See the About page for a discussion of the current goals for this weblog.]  Pro se practitioners; law librarians; and lawyers, law professors or students committed to achieving access to justice for all Americans (especially through the use of assisted self-help programs and information technology) are likely prospects.  Good writing, good manners and good sense are prerequisites — along with enthusiasm.

Anyone interested in making a significant contribution to shlep is urged to contact David Giacalone at “shlep AT localnet dot com” [no spaces in the address].  Let me know your background, areas of interest, any relevant expertise (including weblogging), and how often/much you would be able to contribute to shlep.  Information on how you might like to structure the weblog and share in posting duties would also be appreciated. 

If you know someone who might be interested in being a co-editor at shlep, please alert them to this posting. 

Until an editorial team is in place, shlep will remain in “pre-launch” stage, with only occasional posting.   Please come back to browse and look for our official launching. 

 Labor Day update (Sept. 4, 2006): Thanks to Workplace Prof Blog and Blawg Review #73 for pointing to our Help Wanted sign.  We wonder whether Norma Rae feels conflicted over becoming a prosumer — both a producer and consumer of legal services, and part of the growing process of “externalizing labor costs.”

Additional thanks: (a) to Kevin Heller for a mention at TechLawAdviser, and to Robert Ambrogi at Legal Blog Watch, for his extended coverage of our pre-launch (“Shlepping towards self-help justice“, Sept. 5, 2006).  Bob and Kevin are definitely too busy to join the shlep team.  Are you?  (b) to Rob Truman of BoleyBlogs (Sept. 5, 2006), the head of Electronic Information Services at the Lewis & Clark Law School Library, who seems to have found a populist streak “driving the blog’s creation and title.”  (c) to Jim Milles at Out of the Jungle, who both quotes extensively from shlep and raises a few concerns about self-help assistance in practice (Sept. 6, 2006).

  (d) to Carolyn Elefant of MyShingle, who not only supports increased self-help efforts, but who ably explains why her consistency — solos and small firms — should care about the growing pro se trend. (“Be a shlep!” Sept. 6, 2006)  We left a Comment at MyShingle quoting from Civil Legal Assistance for All Americans: The Report of the Harvard Law School Bellow-Sacks Project on the Future of Access to Civil Legal Services (by Jeanne Charn and Richard Zorza, at 29 – 30, 2005, pdf), discussing the potential role of small firms in bringing full access to justice to the American consumer.   (e) to Walter Olson of Overlawyered.com fame, who kindly pointed over here from his perch at Point of Law (Sept. 7, 2006).  (f) to Stephanie West Allen, who has honored shlep by adding us to her selective Blogroll at Idealawg.

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*  Everybody from Denise and Dennis, Monica and Carolyn, to Bob, Ernie, Marty, Evan, Kevin, and “Ed“.  And, many more.

** The original meaning of “shlep” and its relationship to the Self-Help Law movement is discussed on our About page.

     [pre-launch posting; we hope to finish construction and “go public” soon]

It’s been a quarter century since futurist Alvin Toffler coined the term “prosumer” to describe the merging of the roles of consumer and producer.  (The Third Wave, 1980)   A decade ago, Don Tapscott expanded on the concept of “prosumption” in The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril In The Age of Networked Intelligence (1996) — explaining that digitalization, “internetworking,” disintermediation (removing the middleman) and other forces are blurring the roles of producer and consumer, and creating a digital frontier where the “players, dynamics, rules and requirements for survival and success are all changing.”

The Supreme Court of Mississippi has issued an Order Establishing The Mississippi Access to Justice Commission (via HALT eJournal, Aug. 28, 2006).   According to the Court’s press release (June 29, 2006), the Commission is “comprised of business and community leaders, clergy and representatives from all three branches of government,” and it will seek to “develop a unified strategy to improve access to justice for the poor.”

[This is a pre-launch posting. We will soon finish construction and “go public.”]

SHLEP says:  As programs such as those described in our prior posts here and here are established, fine-tuned, evaluated and updated across the nation, it becomes harder and harder for the judiciary, bar, governmental administrators and leaders, or any other stake-holders to say that Self-Help is an unworkable or unethical pipedream.   Put another way: it becomes easier and easier to find workable models that can make Self-Help Law a viable option for everyday Americans in virtually every courthouse.

[This is a pre-launch posting. We will soon finish construction and “go public.”]       

Is there really a Self-Help Law Movement?   Despite the enthusiasm of its supporters, most members of the public (and many lawyers and judges) have no idea what has already been done to make it possible for individuals to use the justice system fairly and effectively without using a lawyer.