SWAGging Pro Bono: The Ten-Percent Solution

A biologist for whom I wrote some FORTRAN code, way back in my undergraduate Work-Study years, told me what we had to do when we didn't have some key bit of data.

"Just SWAG it for now," he said, "As long as we state our assumptions, we can get some work done right away, and that'll tell us where we have holes to fill in."

What does SWAG mean? I asked.

"Scientific Wild-Assed Guess".

The really interesting problems in life are those where you don't start with all the information you need. For example, my biologist boss needed to know the speed at which certain bugs at certain life stages (the "naiad instar" stages) swam when they left the muck at the bottom of a pond to the surface, where it shed its skin and flew away. The speed and the depth of the pond determined the length of time the bug was exposed to hungry fish, a matter of concern to bug and scientist alike.

We didn't know how fast those naiads swam, and we didn't want to hold up everything while some hapless grad student was put on the problem, so we SWAGged it at a meter a minute and moved on. The scientists were able to get some insights even when operating with estimates, and when they got actual numbers, they plugged them into the model and roared on. It was fun and useful!

Today's experiment is in a related field. Instead of a watery gap between the bottom and the top of a lake, which our frisky naiad seeks to navigate without getting eaten, we have a Justice Gap between the resources available and the resources needed to keep our fellow citizens from meeting an unfair fate in our justice system. Estimating what share of that gap can be assigned to pro bono, what share to legal aid, and so forth is absolutely necessary to effective planning, but it's also like figuring out how fast that little bug can swim. We need some graduate students with stopwatches and hipwaders, but until then, we have to SWAG it and ... who knows? ... maybe something will make it to the surface and take wing.

• The Need
• Pro Bono's Share
• Legal Aid's Share
• Something Else's Share
• Notes

The Need

The Justice Gap is the difference between resources available to persons with a civil legal need, and the resources necessary to ensure a just resolution of that need. The numbers below are for Washington State, 2008.

• Percent of low-income people that needed and got legal services: 20%
  Source: Alliance For Equal Justice;
• Percent of low-income people that needed but didn't get legal services: 80%
  Source: Calculation from the above 
• Number of low-income people that went without legal services: 650000
  Source: Alliance For Equal Justice
• Number of low-income people needing legal services: 812500
  Source: Calculation from the above
• Number of low-income people that needed and got legal services: 162500
  Source: Calculation from the above.

No SWAGging so far ... give us time ...

Pro Bono's Share

In gross, we can figure out the absolute maximum reasonable number of lower-income persons who can be helped via pro bono by counting how many people are in the pool of legal professionals who might reasonably take on some cases, and multiplying by the number of cases they might take on each year.

Lawyers

(All figures: Washington State, November 2009)

• Active Status: 28312
• Emeritus Status: 139. These are, by definition, doing pro bono work already but we might squeeze a little more out of them.
• Inactive Status: 4219. Some of these have expressed interest in pro bono service. At present, the path for this is to change to Emeritus status. Since Emeritus is only about 3% of the pool of (Emeritus+Inactive) it seems reasonable to think that an active recruiting campaign, focussed on each inactive attorney's interests, may be fruitful, although the maximum conversion rate would be only SWAG. 
• Military Status: 11. While this pool is small, I know of a few who may be interested in pro bono service on a time-available basis.
• Suspended Status: 2126. This pool seems a stretch, but for the sake of completeness should be considered. Comparing the number of disbarments per year to the current pool of suspendeds, it seems likely that most suspended will return to active status upon fulfillment of fee or CLE requirements. However, it seems equally likely that they will be replaced by a comparable number of newly suspended members. Thus, for estimation purposes, Suspended should be ignored. This means about 8% of WSBA's potentially active members may be ineligible for pro bono service by reason of suspension at any particular time, which is is something to ponder.

Maximum Pool of Washington State Lawyers that might do pro bono (Active, Emeritus, Inactive, Military): 32549 

Others (See Notes for derivation)

• Law Students 1896 
• Law Faculty 203
• Paralegals 8000 
• Other Legal Services Professionals, e.g. legal secretaries (pure SWAG)

Pool of Other-Than-Lawyer Legal Services Professionals that might do Pro Bono: 10199

What Share of Closing the Justice Gap Might Pro Bono Take?

• Maximum Pool of Legal Services Professionals that (With Unreasonably Optimistic Assumptions) Might do Pro Bono: 42741
• The entire unmet need might be satisfied by pro bono work if each member of the pool took, in addition to their current pro bono efforts, the cases of 15 people a year (650000/42741)
• If each member of the pool took the cases of 1.5 persons a year, that would represent about 10% of the existing gap, enabling a small quip in our title (42741x 1.5 = 64,111 or 10% of 650000).

Legal Aid's Share

We can think of several reasons why Staffed Legal Aid programs are absolutely necessary.

• Even if we had enough raw pro bono hours to close the justice gap, infrastructure in support of those hours is very significant. Organizing, training, matching, and so forth takes time and, perhaps of greater important, organizational memory that simply is not maintained by volunteers.
• Anyway, we don't have enough raw pro bono hours to close the justice gap (unless the assumptions above are way low.)
• Paid staff signifies a recognition by our State that the Justice Gap is a serious enough issue that we're going to invest resources in it. It may be analogized to fire protection; Volunteer Fire Departments are important but not enough to provide comprehensive fire protection.

It's beyond the scope of this post to contemplate how much of the Justice Gap should be closed by Legal Aid organizations, but since there's at the very least a symbiotic relationship between Legal Aid and Pro Bono, it's hard to think about one without thinking about the other.

Assuming that the pro bono efforts could be increased to absorb an additional 10% of the Justice Gap, and that legal aid organizations were increased enough to make that pro bono effort effective, we're left with 90% of the gap left. In round numbers, that is 72% of the entire Justice Gap (90% of the 80% of unmet need. Assuming that it was during our Legal Aid systems' best-funded years that the 20% of the Gap was closed, it seems unlikely that the 72% will be closed by Legal Aid alone.

Something Else Is Needed.

Something Else's Share

The nature of the "Something Else" that is needed to close the Justice Gap is not entirely clear to me. I'm hoping someone smarter than I can figure it out.

One thing seem obvious: it needs to be something that enables the needy community to serve itself, since there will never be enough people from outside that community to serve them.

Running with that assumption:

One method might be to enable the community to develop its own, local experts, from within the community, who can handle some types of cases. An expansion of the Law Clerk program might allow communities to support members while they learn professional skills, then return to their community to serve without the crushing burden of debt. A large number of veterans might find it rewarding to use their limited GI Bill benefits to develop a career in community service law - but only if they were actively recruited to do so.

A complementary approach may be to make the legal system itself more efficient, perhaps using technology to help with the most common matters.

No doubt a dozen other strategies might be employed. There's plenty of opportunity to experiment.

Notes and Assumptions

• Washington State: The data in this note specifically refers to Washington State, since it's the jurisdiction I'm most familiar with. I don't have anything to suggest it is atypical of our United States.
• Lawyer Counts all come from the Washington State Bar Association's lawyer directory. The "Status" selector includes several statuses that are useful for other purposes, but unlikely to yield pro bono help, e.g. Deceased. (Software developers will enjoy that page's disclaimer: "Some results may appear unusual, but they are consistent within the program logic.")
• Law Faculty Counts
• Gonzaga 69 ABA Law School Data/Gonzaga
• SU 65 Faculty Profiles 
• UW 69 Faculty Directory  
• Law Student Counts
• Gonzaga 565 ABA Law School Data/Gonzaga
• SU 781 Admission Facts and Figures
• UW 550 Estimated from Admission Statistics stating 187 1st-years in a 3-year program
  
• Paralegal Counts: Courtesy Brian Haberly of the Washington State Paralegal Association; he is not responsible for any abuse I may have made of the number. Obviously paralegals represent a huge growth opportunity for Closing the Justice Gap efforts but institutional barriers make joint lawyer/paralegal programs rare.
• Unit-of-Data Issues: Some figures are in terms of number of people needing help, some are in number of cases (which could include multiple people), some are in terms of hours of pro bono worked or needed.
• What Is The Goal: Successful programs get that way by defining a strategic goal, making it known to all, and unsentimentally figuring out what it takes to get there. If you don't have the resources to make the goal, then you need either a different approach or a different goal. The only really worthwhile goal of pro bono is to be part of a joint effort to close the Justice Gap. If we don't have the resources to close the Justice Gap by conventional means, then it's time to play some Moneyball!
• Let's UnSWAG!  You'll have noticed some data issues above, and no doubt there are some structural issues as well. Any help you can give would be gratefully received. Are we not teammates?  

Growing Mr. Scrubby

Kitchen Scrubbies are useful but they wear out. Plastic mesh bags are annoying because they're too small to reuse as a shopping bag, and they're probably non-biodegradable, but they are common packaging for some food items, such as elephant garlic and apples from our favorite farmer's market. What do these items have in common?

This week's Change The World Wednesday challenge is

"...collect your garbage rather than toss it out. Continue to compost and recycle, but rather than take your bag of "real" garbage to the dumpster or put it out for collection ... keep it. At the end of the week, take a look at how much you've collected and consider ways to reduce it...."

This is a really good idea, but I needed to adapt it to our little apartment. In the spirit of "consider[ing] ways to reduce" my garbage, I analyzed each item we trashed. The very first thing I saw was a mesh bag that seemed obviously useful for something, but what?  It wasn't bulkly enough to be a scrubby, so (thinking of the world's largest rubber-band ball)
I tried accumulating these mesh bags around a scrubby. Maybe I'll grow the World's Largest Scrubby!

As you can see, Mr. Scrubby (to be formal) is coming along nicely. Doesn't he look natty with the kitchen sink plug topper? All he needs is spats and a stickpin!

Savings Analysis: Growing Mr. Scrubby is not going to make you rich (...unless you really do grow The World's Largest Scrubby, but remember: There Can Be Only One!) but it is a small improvement in garbage output and a tiny savings of money, in exchange for almost no labor at all.

Besides, it's good cheap fun ... and good clean fun!

Simony 2009

I remember, as a child, believing with all my heart and mind (...which were young and unformed...) that Roman Catholicism was the One Way to Heaven. All those Protestants, Hindus, Communists ... I felt sorry for them; they were doomed.

It followed from this belief that whatever the priest or the Pope said was true. Therefore I needed to believe it, because if I did not believe it, I too was doomed.

I can still call that feeling back: the fear that I am doomed if I don't not merely OBEY but BELIEVE is dug in deep. I ignore it nearly all of the time cuz I've grown up, but I can well imagine that some never have. Certainly some of my former seminarians don't seem to have, and for them I must feel pity.

Doesn't it seem, some days, that the Church Hierarchy is trying to see how strange it can get just as a test of faith? Apparently the General Assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is about to issue an official message ("pastoral letter") denouncing sex within marriage for purposes other than making babies as "dehumanized" and "demeaning".

"Dehumanized" and "Demeaning"?

Lordy, am I reading Mad Magazine? It's almost as if the hierarchy is deliberately putting out nonsense to weed out those who have more faith in their loving spouse than in the Vatican. Rather than lead an inclusive Church, they wish to lord over a small band pressed into True Believing, as Asphalt says, tommyrot.

I can't imagine a Good God heading such an organization. Making one choose between Wife and Pope would be dreadful. In fact, using the fear of Hell to compel one to Obey nonsense reminds me of Simony. That's the sin of selling your special access to God's power; in the Acts of the Apostles it refers to a literal attempt by Simon Magus to buy an Apostle's power of working miracles. In 2009, it is (I propose) the use of the Church's purported special access to Divine Power to keep church membership up.

This sort of thing led to the Reformation. But in 2009, it may simply lead to an Abandonment.

(And thanks for being alerted to this by my bloggy buddy at Wholly Hodgepodge)

The Green Hawks and the Hippies should be Friends!

A Green Hawk believes that greening our economy is a matter of national security.

Thomas Friendmann recently wrote about the concept, arguing (if I may paraphrase) that even if global warming is a hoax (it's not) and even if hippie communal sandal wearers look funny (yes we do!), still the reality is that our planet has several billion people who will not stop trying to get to our American standard of living, and THAT will totally break any carbon-based energy economy.

It is indeed awkward to square a just and necessary criticism of free market capitalism with the equally just and necessary use of its enormous power for good. Power tools are like that; you can lose a finger or even more if you're not careful, but you wouldn't want to do without them. People who, like me, have concerns should ponder the Salon "interview" of Adam Smith; he's not necessarily who we think he is.

Now, I'll expect the next week to be filled with climate change deniers cherry-picking phrases from some stolen email and ignoring the debunking of their claims. But even if deniers are right (they're not) and those greedy climatologists are on the take from Big Wind and Big Solar (they wish!), still the Green Hawks are right. And a patriotic American would want our nation to be #1 into the solution, so as to reap the benefit, instead of selling ourselves to others, e.g. Chinese Solar Panel Firm to Open Plant in Arizona.

Of course, I understand patriotic Chinese saying the same thing about THEIR nation. Do your most, and may the best planet win!

---

And for a bit of fun ... since I said "Big Wind"

Cataiku

Lonely panther hunts;

A pride of lions kills daily;

I demand a treat!

The bird of time flies;

Its nest holds tasty meat snacks.

Time. It. Is. To. Feed!

You ignore your cat?

Your hands pet keyboard, not me?

Now I leap toekwtypsypsmishtgytsdsSSSDZXSZZ!!!!!!!!!!!

Washington State's Alliance for Equal Justice

tThe Alliance for Equal Justice of Washington State is an umbrella network of all civil legal aid programs in the state, formed in 2004 to create efficiency, provide support, and foster collaboration among members.
Alliance members are organizations whose predominant mission is to provide civil legal aid to Washington State’s low-income and vulnerable people. There are two basic kinds of member organizations: legal aid programs, and volunteer programs.


Legal Aid Programs
The Alliance includes a number of statewide and specialty legal aid programs. Some are general practice programs; others help low income populations who face unique barriers to our civil justice system or provide representation related to specific types of legal problems. Several programs provide services to individuals and families across the state.


Through statewide planning with one another, the pro bono programs, and Alliance supporters, these programs create efficiency by ensuring services are not duplicated and that legal assistance is available to some of our state's most marginalized populations.

• More information, including a list of member programs

Volunteer Programs

Thousands of lawyers in Washington provide their time and expertise to make access to justice a reality for low income and vulnerable members of our community. 

Pro bono efforts are coordinated through local bar association volunteer lawyer programs throughout the state as well as in law firms, governmental law offices, and corporate counsel offices. Volunteer lawyers provide a continuum of services from brief advice in clinics to extended representation in court.

• More information, including a list of member programs

---

Commentary

Most of the above text is straight from the Alliance's website.

This praiseworthy effort does not seem to flaunt on its site any strategic vision. It recognizes that "Over 650,000 low income people living in Washington went without any help when they faced serious civil legal problems this year" but does not offer any plan to solve the problem of making "access to justice a reality" for that 650,000. It has a list of things it does, and they are all very good things; but  the magnitude of the uncompleted tasks is never compared to the resources marshaled to address them. It has a very wordy yet number-challenged plan (2008) which assumes that the Legislature is going to provide funding where there isn't enough pro bono volunteers; there is very little in the historial record to suggest that this will, in fact, occur. The website talks about the work it does and anecdotes about the success it has achieved; it avoids the topic of the work left to do and how it will achieve it. This is rolling out an aircraft that has yet to fly, without a plan for it to take wing. What a pity! the problem is inherently solvable, although basic math suggests that a comprehensive solution requires projects in addition to those within the Alliance's evident contemplation.

Among these means may be:

• Training members of the underserved community to provide legal services, either by funding law school or systematically expanding the Rule 6 program (In the long run, the best means of providing an underserved community with something is to empower the community to provide for itself or in cooperation with other communities. Every other approach merely perpetuates inequality.)
• Educating members of underserved communities to avoid legal issues or, when possible, to steer their way out of them, through Public Legal Education and comparable programs
• Systematically coordinating efforts with other legal professionals, such as paralegals, legal secretaries and other
• Reforms to laws and rules, to facilitate pro se and other access to courts
• Improving means of funding legal aid programs, to eliminate dependence upon the inherently unstable IOLTA
• Other means; above all, a plan, however voluntary, to close the Justice Gap, using every means available.

It's worth noting also that "equal access to justice" does not promise a particular outcome in any particular care or class of cases. For example, in your garden-variety landlord/tenant matter, sometimes the law and facts are on one side, sometimes on the other; the goal of equal access to justice is to give all parties an equal shot to have the matter decided on the merits.
This is to be distinguished from social justice, which can relate more to outcome than to process. The distinction maybe helpful for enlisting a broader range of support, since some persons reluctant to address social justice issues that may disadvantage themselves personally may nonetheless be totally in agreement with our foundational American vision of Equal Justice Under Law.

I Can't Complain, Although I Want To

I've had good luck and I've had bad luck. Good luck is better!

In my career, I've been screwed over several times, but I must in honesty admit I've also had some unreasonably good luck. In my case, things have more-or-less worked out even.

My first good job was back when people were just getting over the idea that programming had to be on punch cards, and structured programming was still controversial. (Not to me, but to people who just didn't Get It!) If you don't know what structured programming is, think of it as the invention of cellular life; before it, our loose and unstructured coding protoplasm wandered messily all over the place and died mysteriously.

I moved from Michigan to Pelham, Massachusetts possessing several years of programming experience, but had no luck finding work. Partly this was because I was living in a small college town where there was an oversupply of students competing with me. I also didn't want to take a pay cut from what I'd earned in Michigan, little appreciating that my resume and professional appearance was not helpful. (All those people who tell you appearance doesn't count, it's what's inside that matters, knew nothing about looking for work.) Armed with an unrealistic view of my marketability, and knowing nobody actually working for pay in my field, I turned down a couple of offers that I now know were actually reasonable.

Finally, I got an interview at Coleco Industries, in Hartford. This was a grossly excessive commute, but I was out of options, so I went to the interview with the project manager named Ray. Now I'm not going to say anything bad about Ray; I like Ray; he was very outgoing and if he didn't have the greatest technical skills in the world, he was never nasty. If I could make something work, that's all that really mattered to him; what else do you want?

But our first interaction was a screw-up. At the interview, Ray asked if I knew anything about transaction programming. Sure, I thought, I knew what a transaction is. You know, it's like cashing a check. And I knew about programming. So I said yes. And so I got the job.

It turned out that we had both fooled ourselves and each other. Transaction programming was a specialized field, sort of like pre-internet page serving with some database access thrown it. It wasn't that hard to pick up, so maybe Ray never knew we'd mutually b.s.'d each other. Maybe it didn't matter, since it all worked out.  Maybe the supply of programmers was tight in Hartford, with the big insurance companies vacuuming up all the talent. Or maybe Ray could never admit a mistake.

At any rate, through this lucky accident I got a gig which was still the best job I ever had. The working conditions were good, the pay and bennies fine, I had lots of friends and respect for the knowledge I had crafted. (I would still be working there today, if the company hadn't gone bankrupt, but that's another funny story...)


I like to think of that job interview, when I am reminded of the times I was screwed over. For certain organizations, I have sacrificed a lot; in return, I've been treated like a used tissue - not even recycled! Now, this has been not everywhere and everytime; I can name some good organizations and great bosses too but, frankly, technical merit and business success has too often been the least important features of too many projects. This would annoy any normal person but, since my entire programming career depended on that one bit of unreasonably good luck, how can I complain when the dice run cold?

Don't we all like to think that anybody can succeed with hard work, good planning, skill and determination? Don't we all know this is horseshit, although (like a steaming manure pile), sometimes it's your only source of warmth on a cold wintery day? Anyone will find it easier to succeed with work, planning, skill, determination and a bit of horseshit, but as Stephen Schwartz writes in Pippin:

"Now listen to me closely I'll endeavor to explain
What separates a charlatan from a Charlemagne
A rule confessed by generals illustrious and various
Though pompous as a Pompey or daring as a Darius
A simple rule that every good man knows by heart
It's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart"

And with that cheery thought ... good night and good luck!

The Healing of America: Why Fear Learning from Our Friends?

If you never saw the ocean, you might think your local swimming hole is a pretty big body of water.

That's the problem with people who think our American health care system is the best in the world: they have never gone to see if anything is better.

Pride in your local swimming hole is harmless, but health care is life and death. Only an arrogant fool would think that THEY know all the answers, and cannot possibly learn from our friends in Germany, Japan, France, Canada, India and the U.K.. A wise man would go there, try their system, and see what ideas we can borrow for ourselves.


In "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care", T. R. Reid does every American a great big favor by taking his bad shoulder around the world to be looked at by doctors in six countries. What he finds will surprise anyone who thinks the rest of the world is a socialist hell, burdened by grey bureaucrats staffing drably uniformed Death Panels. He finds is that each of those nations has a different system, tuned to their particular histories, and with strengths and weaknesses. Most are dominated by private suppliers, e.g. doctors who run their own offices. I was shocked to discover that, on average, Japanese visit doctors more than twice as often as Americans; France's information technology makes ours look like a joke; even in much-maligned Britain people's lives are saved because there is no financial barrier to coming to the doctor if you have a suspicious lump. Why are Americans afraid to learn these basic facts? Why not take their ideas to improve our system? Are we just too proud to live?

I suppose pride is part of the problem; the other is that Our existing system has enormous institutional inertia. As Machiavelli said those few who reap great profit from some affair can easily defeat a vastly greater number who have a more diffuse interest. In providing an actual experience of seeking health care around the world, this book suggests that our current arrangements are not the best; but of course, they are the best to those it enriches.  Reid tries to demonstrate that inertia can be overcome, by describing how Taiwan and Switzerland converted their systems around the time that the Clinton initiatives failed. I suspect, unfortunately, that our American system will be a trickier conversion, because the forces arrayed against reform learned from Taiwan and Switzerland, and will fight to keep what they've got; you cannot take a juicy steak away from a pack of hungry dogs without getting bitten.

If you're in a hurry, you will appreciate that this book is a quick read. While it's got plenty of footnotes so you can verify the assertions and learn more, its organization lends itself to grabbing a quick chapter while you can. I especially enjoyed the chapters about each nation; they were like a short story of a visitor seeking help and happened when he did.

However, I found the most surprising chapter entitled "An Apple A Day", which discusses why our current system works against preventative measures. Since your insurer as a youth will not be your insurer in old age, the former has no reason to do anything that would benefit only the latter. If a private insurer can put off dealing with a problem until the patient turns 65, the private insurer may not have to deal with it at all! It is a perfect example of how what is economically efficient in individual health PAYMENT transactions results in systemic inefficiency in the overall health CARE system.

However, the most important chapter may be "The First Question". Ultimately health care is not a financial question; it is a moral question. What kind of nation are we? What kind of people are we?

If we are content that a woman shall live or die depending solely upon whether she is the president of a company or its minimum-wage floor-mopper, then we need do nothing. We have that system already. Of course, we can't be very proud of that; it's basically a return to the hells of Upton Sinclair.

If, however, we are a more decent people, we believe that all of us should have a good chance at life. Life is not a luxury to be reserved, but a necessity to be shared by to all members of our community. And, best of all, as this book shows, we have friends in other nations who can show us how they did it.

It's our choice.

What are we?

Dusting Lightbulbs for Fun and Profit

In response to this week's Change the World Wednesday Challenge:

"In most homes there are multiple light bulbs used to light a single area. For example, bathrooms usually have a row of vanity lights ... ceiling fans often have three or more light bulbs ... and kitchens typically have quite a few lights (over the sink, over the table, over the center of the room, etc.). So, this week, twist off all but one bulb in each area and see if it works for you. If one bulb isn't enough light, twist on a second ... or a third. The idea, here, is to experiment a little, use only the amount of light that is truly necessary, and save a lot. So, twist them off!

So I took a look at our bathroom lighting.
Six bulbs, one that burned out a while back; since we never bothered replacing, clearly we didn't need it.

I unscrewed the one of those left (!Basta! that's HOT!) and the result seemed o.k. We'll try it for a week and, if there's a problem, screw it back in again. Experimentation is fun!

I noticed the top of the bulb was dusty. That dust is dysfunctional from a lighting standpoint; it coverts light to heat, not only absorbing maybe 5-10% of the light but also heating up the bulb, shortening its life. So by dusting the tops of the 4 bulbs left on, I increased their output, getting FOR FREE the equivalent of another half-a-lightbulb. It's not massive wealth but hey, let's take what we can get!

If we owned this place, I would install a inexpensive mirror strip behind and above the bulbs, to cut the light wastened in bouncing off the wall and ceiling. For that matter, by the time we can afford a home of our own, lightemitting strips will be cheap enough for home use.

But for now: dust those light bulbs to save money AND our planet!