Law can be complex, but much complexity is avoidable, done by lawyers maybe well-meaning to “protect” clients from it / don’t want to use limited resources explaining. But egalitarian, public interest lawyering means making law comprehensible & accessible.
https://twitter.com/ms_peaceweaver/status/1401219952548397063
I know that very often my clients don’t think they will “get it”. But when I take time to explain it - they often do. Ofc, explaining may have to go beyond the law, to the motivations / biases of Gov decision-makers and judges. +
I spent time yesterday apologising to a client about how, a long time ago, when they were the partner of a client I didn’t take the time to make sure they understood the legal arguments we were making for them. +
I had left it to the solicitor, but also I assumed the clients didn’t want to know about the mechanics - they just wanted to win (immigration, so it was get deported or get to stay) +
That was true for the particular migrant concerned: they didn’t want to use energy hearing about the legal strategy. But their partner did, it mattered to them (and they’re super smart so they would have got, the fiendishly complex ground breaking legal issues) +
So that case happened TO the partner. They didn’t get to be an informed participant. And that was partly because I thought “law is complex, explain outcomes and risks, but law?” +
When Ieft independent Bar for @OSFJustice my new colleagues (& comrades), especially non-litigator ones pushed back. What is strategic litigation? An elite activity, where brilliant lawyers persuade judges? Or one where power of law is shared through knowledge & understanding? +
How useful can law really be for those who aren’t rich, if the understanding of it is guarded by lawyers? So what if they’re “our” lawyers, can law be *our tool* if we don’t understand it? +
Activist lawyering can easily become saviour-ing. The lawyer solves the vulnerable person’s problem. Sometimes that’s how it has to be - when my client’s on the runway, I ain’t gonna spend time explaining how judicial review works. My job is to get them off the plane. +
But we (lawyers) have to guard against infantilising our clients. While respecting their boundaries and limits, IMO we’ve a duty to equip them as best we can to understand, and thereby to lead, the case. +
Fully including clients in legal strategy is hard work, legal aid doesn’t really pay for it, and as counsel we depend on solicitors to do much of it. +
But I try to make time for doing it, well enough. Sometimes it’s crucial. When I was one of the lawyers representing 42 Bangladeshi irregular migrant strawberry pickers, who had struck to be paid, in their claim against Greece for forced labour, we had to explain +
+ why we had declined to represent some similarly placed strikers. We sat with these workers, and many of the 42 explaining why our legal strategy had required that. +
Listening (thru an interpreter) to the arguments that ensued showed many of the workers understood the complex law. They got it. And they explained to each other. +
The 42 workers voted to share their compensation with the few who hadn’t been included in the law suit. +
IMO it’s not just litigants who can “get” complex law - with the help of expert interlocutors. Most of us can. And if we can’t, maybe it’s the law that should change. //
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