Law Without Lawyers: Access to Civil Justice and the Cost of Legal Services

The high cost of legal services presents a significant access-to-justice problem. In this Article, I argue that this problem is actually two distinct problems—one affecting primarily low- and moderate income persons, and one affecting primarily deep-pocketed corporate defendants. Because the problems are different, they are probably not amenable to a single solution. Most significantly, the Article applies Baumol’s “cost disease” to the rising cost of legal services, thus placing the debate over rising legal costs in a wider economic context