Archive for the 'Studies & Reports' Category
david giacalone - November 20, 2006 @ 6:30 pm
· Studies & Reports
The Boston Globe unbundling article we discussed earlier today included an On the Net link worth checking out and keeping in mind — it’s for a Pro Se Statistics Memorandum found at the National Center for State Courts website. Put together by Madelynn Herman for the NSCS Knowledge and Information Services group, the September 2006 Memo lists reports from around the nation on the numbers of self-represented litigants in the studied jurisdictions (selected state trial and appellate courts, as well as federal courts). The listed studies are annotated with a “snapshot of statistics”. The numbers are eye-openers.
Ms. Herman notes:
Courts are continuing to see an increase in the numbers of litigants who represent themselves. Self-represented litigants are most likely to appear without counsel in domestic-relations matters, such as divorce, custody and child support, small claims, landlord/tenant, probate, protective orders, and other civil matters. While national statistics on the numbers of self-represented litigants are not available, several states and many jurisdictions keep track of the numbers of self-represented litigants in their courts.
MaryWhisner - November 16, 2006 @ 8:50 pm
· Resources-Consumer, Resources-Practitioner, Studies & Reports
More and more legal and government information is available online. But how well is it organized? Can you find it easily, or do you have to wade through menu after menu? Is it presented in a way that newcomers can figure out or does the organization only make sense to insiders? Two organizations offer criteria for best practices and give examples of courts and agencies that have really good websites.
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david giacalone - October 21, 2006 @ 1:47 pm
· Resources-Practitioner, Studies & Reports
Canadian Experience points out that, unlike under U.S. law and judicial ethics, Canadian judges have a duty, not merely a right, to provide reasonable assistance to pro se litigants to ensure a fair trial. I’ll save the particulars for later postings, but urge you to read Goldschmidt’s description of the evolution of the judicial role toward the self-represented, along with details about the very few attempts in the USA to create protocols for judges faced with pro se litigants. The 44-page report includes a lengthy appendix, with charts showing Required, Permitted, and Impermissable assistance by judges in Canadian courts, in both criminal and civil matters. (You can find much more on pro se issues and the judiciary at the American Judicature Society resources page, and also in materials on the role of judges and best practices in the courtroom, gathered for a recent access-to-justice conference,which was hosted by the NYS Judicial Institute.)
MaryWhisner - October 19, 2006 @ 8:18 pm
· Studies & Reports
The California Courts have been changing some of their standard forms to make them more readable. Now there is a report of the first study of the readability of court forms, and it concludes that the changes did make a difference — a big one. Maria Mindlin, Is Plain Language Better? Comparative Readability Study of Plain Language Forms (undated pdf); a version of the article is in 10 Scribes J. Legal Writing 55-65 (2005-2006).
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david giacalone - October 19, 2006 @ 3:12 pm
· News Items, Studies & Reports
According to a press release from the National Association of Legal Document Preparers, dated Oct. 19, 2006, “One year after legislation designed to reduce personal bankruptcy filings went into effect, nearly 80% of legal document preparers are seeing a spike in bankruptcy filings.” Despite the state of confusion among the public described in our prior post on bankruptcy self-help, NALDP Director Lizanne Sadlier reports that “people are starting to wade through that misinformation and realize they can still file for bankruptcy and qualify for Chapter 7.” Sadlier added that “more complicated paperwork and increased lawyer fees are leading many people to seek affordable and reliable assistance from legal document preparers.” In addition, although bankruptcy attorney fees are rising, “the majority of legal document preparers surveyed have not raised their prices, which are typically 50-80% less than attorney fees.”
Finally, to no one’s surprise (if you think about it), the great majority of people filing for bankruptcy “do not have the means to qualify for Chapter 13” (which applies to people above the median income in each state), and therefore do qualify for Chapter 7.
david giacalone - October 12, 2006 @ 8:27 pm
· News Items, Studies & Reports
Here are two new items that relate to last night’s post realtors fight unbundling,
and to the theme that real estate brokers are trying to keep home buyers and sellers “broker” than should happen in a truly competitive marketplace:
1] The Federal Trade Commission announced a real estate broker enforcement sweep today, explaining that it would litigate against two real estate groups and accept consent agreements from five others: According to the press release (dated Oct. 12, 2006):
The Federal Trade Commission today charged two real estate groups operating multiple listing services in the Detroit, Michigan, area with illegally restraining competition by limiting consumers’ ability to obtain low-cost real estate brokerage services. The Commission also announced consent agreements with five other groups operating multiple listing services in parts of Colorado, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Virginia, and Wisconsin, that have discontinued the challenged conduct.
According to the FTC, all seven groups adopted rules that withheld valuable benefits of the Multiple Listing Services (MLSs) they control from consumers who chose to enter into non-traditional listing contracts with real estate brokers. Six of the seven blocked non-traditional, less-than-full-service listings from being transmitted by the MLS to popular Internet Web sites. The seventh went further, adopting policies that include blocking such non-traditional brokerage contracts from the MLS entirely.
The FTC has an updated website – Competition in the Real Estate Industry, and an 18-page online Glossary of Real Estate terminology, that should be helpful to do-it-yourselfers and other home buyers and sellers. update: (Oct. 13, 2006) The Washington Post has an article on the FTC actions, with comments from some of the respondents and the National Association of Realtors; via Antitrust Review weblog.
2] Attorney and public policy analyst Mark S. Nadel has released a for-comment report at the AEI-Brookings Joint Center website, entitled “A Critical Assessment of the Standard, Traditional, Residential Real Estate Broker Commission Rate Structure,” October 2006, Click for the Abstract or the full, 77-page PDF report. Nadel’s Executive Summary starts: “While real estate brokers have long set their fee as a straight percentage of a home’s sale price, this formula is an anomaly and a primary reason why such fees may be inflated by more than $30 billion annually.” After this criticism [of the traditional fee structure], the article “suggests that consumers would benefit most from a fee-for-service approach – combining flat fees, hourly fees, and bonuses, including percentages of extra value created – and it identifies currently available examples of some of these options. After reviewing eight reasons why incumbents are able to protect the current structure, the article “suggests six new disclosures that might undermine the industry’s protectionist practices.”
The Report has a good discussion of why unbundling can benefit consumers and of the harms from requiring bundled services. Traditional brokers, who contend “that the public expects an ‘agent’ to provide some minimum set of services, such as delivering offers, have successfully helped to pass laws in at least 17 states that require brokers to provide some minimum set of services.” [footnote 139 lists the statutes and regulations requiring the bundled minimum services] The seventeen states with such laws are: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin. Debunking the need for such bundling, Nadel notes:
“If policy makers were truly concerned that consumers might be denied a service they expected, an effective disclosure and/or a waiver option would be the appropriate response to this, as noted by the DOJ, the FTC, and the Wall Street Journal, among others, but only about five of the 17 states now permit sellers to waive state minimum service requirements. If the laws were really intended to ensure that consumers received all the services that they expected, they would explicitly require listing brokers to support the widest dissemination of the seller’s listing, and brokers engaged to show buyers homes to disclose all the homes meeting the buyer’s search criteria. These are services that consumers are now often being denied, without their knowledge, and to their detriment!”
There is much more in this study, but I will leave you with Nadel’s explanation for the continuation of anti-consumer laws. In a section captioned, State Real Estate Commissions Protect Traditional Business Models, Nadel states:
“Most regulation of real estate brokerage is a result of state law and state real estate commissions created by state legislatures. Although the laws and commissions are presumed to be intended to protect consumers, a 2006 Consumer Federation of America (CFA) survey of real estate regulatory agencies in 47 of the 50 states found that more than 70 percent of commissioners were real estate brokers or salespeople. Given the presence of real estate agents in every state legislative district and the availability of state affiliates of the NAR to manage industry lobbying and campaign contributions, it is not surprising that states have generally protected traditional brokers from entrants with new business models.”
The Nadel Study has quickly received quite a bit of attention: E.g., from Jonathan Miller at the Matrix real estate weblog (Oct. 10, 2006); RealtyTimes (Oct. 10, 2006) and The RealDeal (Oct. 11, 2006). Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics approves. Similar to the defense given by lawyers to the standard contingency fee, realtors note that most agents are not making very much money and that they only get paid if they sell the home. Of course, the opportunity of making a large commission for relatively little work (like making a large legal fee in a personal injury case) is what attracts far more agents to real estate sales than is efficient or economically rational. Far from proving that commission rates must be reasonable, the assertion that so many agents are struggling points to the human desire, and willingness to take an irrational risk, for a big score. Having a lot of hungry colleagues does not justify bloated fees for the successful brokers and agents (or p/i lawyers), and does not disprove that the commission structure is a racket that overcharges the consumer.
david giacalone - September 27, 2006 @ 10:52 am
· Studies & Reports
[in pre-launch status, as we search for a shlep team — can you contribute?]
The legal reform group HALT has released two studies that should be of great interest to the self-help law community. Both focus on practices in California and offer positive assessments and “best practices” suggestions:
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david giacalone - September 20, 2006 @ 5:03 pm
· Resources-Practitioner, Studies & Reports
Self-help law guru Richard Zorza (Coordinator of the Self-Represented Litigation Network) has succinctly described “Trends in Self-Represented Litigation Innovation” (6 pp. pdf.) in an article appearing in Future Trends in State Courts 2006, from the National Council for State Courts.
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david giacalone - September 14, 2006 @ 2:13 pm
· Studies & Reports, Viewpoint
[pre-launch status, as we search for a shlep team — can you contribute?]
The law sector of the blogosphere has been slow to react to the important survey announced last week by LexisNexis, in a press release captioned “US Adults More Likely to Turn to the Web For Legal Information, New Survey from lawyers.com Reveals” (Sept. 5, 2006). Beyond mere pointers to the story, I have only been able to locate one summary, at LegalBlogWatch, plus extensive excerpts at Slaw [“a cooperative weblog about Canadian legal research and IT, etc.”], in a posting with the ominous headline As we Knew, As we Feared, and the ending sentence, “More signs of the Apocalypse.”
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david giacalone - August 17, 2006 @ 10:56 pm
· Resources-Consumer, Resources-Practitioner, Studies & Reports
[This is a pre-launch posting. We will soon finish construction and “go public.”]
The State Justice Institute‘s 2005 Pro Se Summit Report contains the following comprehensive list of the types of court-based services, systems, and strategies that are being used in various locales across the country, as they build their Self-Help and Pro Se assistance programs [see The Future of Self-Represented Litigation: A Report from the March 2005 Summit (State Justice Institute, 2005, Richard Zorza, Esq., pdf. 146 pages) :
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