#TheCrimeToBeNamedMelania. Part 9. How to cheat people out of court representation that costs 17 cents per hour or less.

I wrote in the previous blogs of this series that a Romanian American couple that is being corruptly squeezed out of their prime business real estate in the center of the business district of Oneonta, New York, was cheated by Judge John F. Lambert of her paid-for attorney (to whom she paid, reportedly $16,000 for doing nothing and selling her out at every turn, and remained owing, allegedly, $21,000).

The attorney charged

• $300 per hour for a partner,
  $250 per hour for an associate, and even
  $100 for a "law clerk" - which is a false statement, since "law clerks" must have law degrees, and the price suggests that it is a secretary/paralegal without any law degree.
  
  

  

  
  

Judge Lambert let Melania and Nicolae Pervu's law firm out, for non-payment of fees (even though his usual policy - for non-connected attorneys, of course, is to make them represent the non-paying client for free at trials), let the attorneys abandon their client in the middle of a contempt proceeding, and did not even advise Melania and Nicolae Pervu of their right to an assigned free counsel in such a type of proceeding - just callously telling them instead, reportedly,

• after their attorney have just proven that they cannot pay, and
• after the City of Oneonta has just complained that they are supposedly not doing costly "bringing-up-to-code" the place where multiple government agencies have put the poor, after inspections of the pace
  

that the judge was sure they would be able to find another attorney for themselves.

A pro se individual, or an individual rendered pro se by a crooked judge like Lambert, finds him/herself as a fish out of water - not knowing what to do, or who to ask, especially if he/she does not have the money for a new lawyer, with fees like mentioned above, and especially where their opponent in litigation is the powerful government represented, at taxpayer expense, by attorneys.

Since attorneys grabbed for themselves in the United States, and continue to maintain, with the help of their most powerful group, judges, monopoly on who may represent people in court, 

people in the United States are reduced to a "choice": 

• represent yourself - and lose because you do not know the law very well, do not know the tricks, do not know the judge and because judges are hostile to pro se parties; or

• bankrupt yourself and your family and friends on another extortionist lawyer.

But - there is a third and fourth ways.

The third way, a taboo and anathema amongst attorneys to even speak about - is to just allow people to HIRE WHO THEY WANT to represent them in court.

After all, licensing/regulation of a profession is a type of the government's help in marketing for a lawyer.

And, any competent adult should be able to decide his own destiny, for his benefit or detriment, including his choice of his own representative - especially in cases where government is on the other side of a court case.

But, no, as a matter of social control, courts refuse to allow competent people to pick who they want to represent themselves in court.

When consumers DID sue for such a right, their right to choose their own representative in court was denied by courts by claims of courts' own power (so, courts acknowledged they have an interest in the litigation, but still decided the case for themselves, instead of recusing and having a temporary judge appointed to decide that case due to an obvious and irreconcilable conflict of interest).

The name of the case is Turner v ABA (and all 9 justices of the U.S. Supreme Court that fixed the case for themselves by consolidating it from several different circuits and picking their own judge for themselves), 407 F.Supp. 451 (1975).

The fourth way to get representation in court involves NO investment of anyone whatsoever, in fact, it involves a BIG, HUGE, ENORMOUS, GIGANTIC, HUMUNGOUS - savings for us all.

An AI software, Luminance, is being now used by a giant law firm - which means, it is available on the market now - and does what a human being without a license will be put in jail for doing - it looks for and pinpoints "inconsistencies" in documents for lawyers, which means, it uses "the judgement of a lawyer" and gives lawyers - legal advice regarding such inconsistencies. Here is what AI Luminance can do:

Yet another AI legal software, ROSS, is being sold - to lawyers only - for just $123 per month's subscription, a price of a family cell phone plan.

Note that both AI platforms are marketed to lawyers only - which is an unwarranted and an illegal discrimination against pro se nonlawyer litigants, which constitute the majority of litigants in court right now and are suffering from lack of access to specifically the type of services that these AI platforms offer. There is no legitimate reason whatsoever, especially during the ever-deepening justice gap in the country where, according to scholars, the majority of UNRICH (poor and middle class) Americans cannot afford legal services and are forced to forfeit a lot of their claims of violations of their rights. "Neglected in today’s headlines, blogs, and talk radio is a silent shameful crisis inflicting suffering and costing the nation money, legitimacy, and decency. Our justice system has become inaccessible to millions of people who are poor, of modest or even average means. As a result, every day, we violate the “equal justice under law” promise engraved on the front of the grand United States Supreme Court. Americans who cannot afford legal help routinely forfeit basic rights because they cannot afford to enforce them."
Beyond Elite Law: Access to Civil Justice in America (p. xv). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. Note the edition. Cambridge University Press. Note who developed Luminance.

Note the hypocrisy of holding the technology that is desperately needed by the people while at the same time publishing lamentations about people forfeiting their rights because they cannot afford human lawyers. $125 per month is approximately 17 cents per hour. That is the actual cost of legal services now. 17 cents for hour, and even less. Because, for these 17 cents per hour the AI software will do for you a lot more than a human lawyer can ever dream of doing. It will accept your questions asked in a natural language, not in legal terms, translate your questions into legal terms, go, fast, through a zillion of documents, cases, statutes and regulations - and spit out for you a possible solution for your problem, at least, it may show you what the state of the law is on the topic, issue you are interested in and point you into the right direction as to how to argue your case in court. On your own. For free. But empowered by AI - the same way as lawyers already are. What follows from sales of and use of Luminance and Ross in the United States, is: 1. The AI legal technology is already here, available AND AFFORDABLE - for an average American, for the same average American who cannot afford an overpriced (and less efficient than AI) human lawyer. 2. Calling what a machine can do "unauthorized practice of law" is ridiculous. We do not license machines to do professional work, do we? So, if a robot can do a task, and in response to a normal-language input, that task should not be licensed to humans, especially where a crisis of access to justice exists because human professionals have made their services overpriced and ridiculously unaffordable to the majority of Americans. Compare: $300 per hour for Donovan who sold out his clients, did nothing for them than made their situation worse, but charged them $16,000 and claimed they owe him $21,000 more - over a span of 5 months and just several court appearances, no trials, no evidentiary hearings. AS OPPOSED TO 17 CENTS per hour for AI that would work a million times faster than any Donovan ever can, and will certainly not have political interests to sell out the user. The AI is 1765 TIMES cheaper than Donovan, while being million times more efficient and honest than Donovan. My question is - ladies and gentlemen, the American Public, We the People - WHY DO YOU NEED DONOVANS? Why can't you urge, no MANDATE YOUR government, YOUR public servants, to make the antimonopoly service, the Federal Trade Commission (also overpowered by Donovans) to do their job for their very high salaries that they currently draw for nothing, and, 1. QUASH attorney monopoly as violating federal civil and criminal antitrust laws, and/or simply 2. to MAKE companies selling AI software subscriptions, Luminance and Ross, to attorneys only, to sell them to everybody, at the same affordable price - and the attorney monopoly will then die its natural death, as it should have long time ago. 3. Have the government, instead of pouring zillions of dollars into humans reviewing papers and lamenting that there is not enough money left to fund legal representation for Americans, to just switch all courts to AI Ross or Luminance, or any other, better AI software (on a competitive basis, after public bidding), and allow the public to use legal AI assistants in and out of courtroom, free of charge or for a small fee. Access to justice crisis - resolved. Budget crisis for courts - resolved. Caseload crisis for courts - resolved. AI can read through a year-load of cases in, probably, 5 minutes, spitting out prospective decisions based on the law and not on backroom deals of some wining-and-dining players. Affordable representation for the public to address their legal needs and protect their rights - resolved. Why shouldn't We the People inundate the Federal Trade Commission NOW with demands that it take its collective head from where it is now and MAKE Luminance and ROSS sell their products to non-lawyers? The whole country was eagerly discussing a supposed discrimination where a baker refused to make and sell a wedding cake to a same sex couple. This is discrimination of a trade, a profession AGAINST ALL OF YOU, WE THE PEOPLE, the employer of the government. Just get off your collective behinds, stop complaining about the high cost of legal services and MAKE YOUR GOVERNMENT DO ITS JOB FOR YOU, FOR YOUR BENEFIT. Consider: 17 cents per hour vs $300 per hour and the justice gap. The bastards.