A side question: Is it normal for US citizens to carry legal insurance to pay for representation in the event that they get into trouble? My home insurance has this tacked on as additional cover.
No, for some reason that type of insurance has not made broad inroads on this side of the pond. I understand it’s fairly common in the UK and Europe.
I don’t understand why it’s not been adopted broadly here in North America. It seems eminently practical and a good step to help ensure access to justice.
In the US they do sell dedicated legal insurance. It’s often offered by larger employers as an additional benefit option, but solely at the employee’s expense.
Most of these programs are ill-disguised ripoffs. What you get for your payment is the right to call a telephone call center and speak to a “paralegal”. And they can arrange for you to hire an attorney from their list at a much-reduced price. *If *they have somebody local to you, which is not guaranteed, especially if you’re not in a big city.
My wife’s a lawyer and once looked into affiliating with a few of these systems as a provider. She was expecting something akin to how an MD agrees to take XYZ Health System’s insurance plan.
Nope. They would send her clients which she was obligated to accept and then pay her a pittance for the work. On a fixed fee schedule which put 100% of the risk of being assigned a complex case on her, rather than on them.
The bottom line being that the attorneys who do sign up to be providers under this system are unlikely to be top performers; rather it’s the lawyers who’d otherwise starve if they had to depend on their own skill & reputation to survive.
Her research was 15+ years ago now, so it may be obsolete. But every year I see solicitations for very similar legal insurance plans in my employee benefit enrollment package. What changes from year to year is which insurer my employer is shilling for. Since the model hasn’t changed from the consumer POV, I conclude it probably hasn’t changed (much) from the provider POV either.
I have a habit of making poorly worded questions, I know I have a problem and am trying to word better. But yes I was wondering just how far states can go in putting obstacles to public defenders. This outdated article I found said that Texas is one of the few states where judges directly decide which public defender is assigned to which defendant:
I guess an add on question which I should have included in my OP was at what point would the SC step in and tell a state you’re impeding access to public defenders for the indigent.
And as a another poster asked what happens if someone looks on paper like they could afford counsel, but in reality cannot? Or just refuses to hire counsel, do they just sit in jail until they hire one?
The Supreme Court doesn’t just step in; somebody has to appeal a case or sue the government, arguing that their right to counsel as established by existing precedent is not being met.
Everybody has the right to defend themselves at a criminal trial if they want to. (The judge will try very hard to convince you otherwise, though.) If you don’t hire counsel and refuse to offer your own defense, the state can appoint counsel for you and send you a bill.