Professor Engler Spoke at Civil Gideon Symposium

Professor Russell Engler spoke at Toward a Civil Gideon: The Future of Legal Services, a symposium on Saturday April 6th.  The symposium discussed the crisis of unrepresented civil litigants and how the legal system is not meeting current needs. The event was hosted by the Harvard Law and Policy Review, which published Professor Engler’s article on the topic, and may be found at http://hlpronline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Turner-v-Rogers-and-the-Essential-Role-of-the-Courts-in-Delivering-Access-to-Justice.pdf.

At the Symposium, Professor Engler identified the high incidence of unmet legal needs, the desperate shortage of lawyers handling civil cases for litigants who are indigent or of moderate means, the resulting flood of unrepresented litigants in the court, and the manner in which unrepresented litigants get steamrolled by the court process and forfeit important rights. 

Professor Engler offered a vision of a civil right to counsel that serves as a component of a more comprehensive Access to Justice strategy. Professor Engler closed his prepared remarks by urging us to think of a civil Gideon as standing for the basic proposition that “if something important is at stake, and nothing but a full right to counsel can protect that interest, then a full right to counsel should exist.”

Third-year Student Benjamin Y. Jones who attended the event stated, "I walked away with a new found commitment to addressing systemic issues affecting the poor in our legal system - shocked by the numbers of unrepresented litigants and unbalanced proceedings."

Professor Engler has written numerous articles and has spoken on the concepts of Access to Justice and civil Gideon. He is the director of Clinical Programs at New England Law | Boston and affiliated with the school’s Center for Law and Social Responsibility, providing guidance to students seeking experiential learning at New England, with a particular focus on those considering public interest careers.