IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/empleg/v5y2008i4p875-906.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

To Lawyer or Not to Lawyer: Is that the Question?

Author

Listed:
  • Herbert M. Kritzer

Abstract

A central aspect of much of the debate over access to justice is the cost of legal services. The presumption of most participants in the debate is that individuals of limited or modest means do not obtain legal assistance because they cannot afford the cost of that assistance. The question I consider in this article is whether income is a major factor in the decision to obtain the assistance of a qualified legal professional. Drawing on data from seven different countries (the United States, England and Wales, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Japan), I examine the relationship between income and using a legal professional. The results are remarkably consistent across the seven countries: income has relatively little relationship with the decision to use a legal professional to deal with a dispute or other legal need. The decision to use a lawyer appears to be much more a function of the nature of the dispute. Even those who could afford to retain a lawyer frequently make the decision to forego that assistance, usually at about the same rate as those with limited resources. The analysis suggests that those considering access to justice issues need to grapple with the more general issues of how those with legal needs, regardless of the resources they have available, evaluate the costs and benefits of hiring a lawyer.

Suggested Citation

  • Herbert M. Kritzer, 2008. "To Lawyer or Not to Lawyer: Is that the Question?," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(4), pages 875-906, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:empleg:v:5:y:2008:i:4:p:875-906
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1740-1461.2008.00144.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2008.00144.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2008.00144.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Unknown, 2005. "Forward," 2005 Conference: Slovenia in the EU - Challenges for Agriculture, Food Science and Rural Affairs, November 10-11, 2005, Moravske Toplice, Slovenia 183804, Slovenian Association of Agricultural Economists (DAES).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anna Gunderson, 2021. "Ideology, Disadvantage, and Federal District Court Inmate Civil Rights Filings: The Troubling Effects of Pro Se Status," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(3), pages 603-628, September.
    2. Yun-chien Chang & Su-hao Tu, 2020. "Two-way selection between flat-fee attorneys and litigants: theoretical and empirical analyses," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 49(1), pages 131-164, February.
    3. Danielle Venn, 2009. "Legislation, Collective Bargaining and Enforcement: Updating the OECD Employment Protection Indicators," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 89, OECD Publishing.
    4. Margherita Saraceno, 2018. "Justice: Greater Access, Lower Costs," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 4(2), pages 283-312, July.
    5. Hadfield, Gillian K., 2014. "The cost of law: Promoting access to justice through the (un)corporate practice of law," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(S), pages 43-63.
    6. P. Pleasence & N. J. Balmer & R. L. Sandefur, 2016. "Apples and Oranges: An International Comparison of the Public's Experience of Justiciable Problems and the Methodological Issues Affecting Comparative Study," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(1), pages 50-93, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pilar Lopez-Llompart & G. Mathias Kondolf, 2016. "Encroachments in floodways of the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 81(1), pages 513-542, March.
    2. Cheng, Jianquan & Bertolini, Luca, 2013. "Measuring urban job accessibility with distance decay, competition and diversity," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 100-109.
    3. M. De Donno & M. Pratelli, 2006. "A theory of stochastic integration for bond markets," Papers math/0602532, arXiv.org.
    4. Prilly Oktoviany & Robert Knobloch & Ralf Korn, 2021. "A machine learning-based price state prediction model for agricultural commodities using external factors," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 44(2), pages 1063-1085, December.
    5. Michelle Sheran Sylvester, 2007. "The Career and Family Choices of Women: A Dynamic Analysis of Labor Force Participation, Schooling, Marriage and Fertility Decisions," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(3), pages 367-399, July.
    6. Henrekson, Magnus & Johansson, Dan, 2010. "Firm Growth, Institutions and Structural Transformation," Ratio Working Papers 150, The Ratio Institute.
    7. Karen K. Lewis, 2011. "Global Asset Pricing," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 435-466, December.
    8. DAVID M. BLAU & WILBERT van der KLAAUW, 2013. "What Determines Family Structure?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 579-604, January.
    9. Panagiota DIONYSOPOULOU & Georgios SVARNIAS & Theodore PAPAILIAS, 2021. "Total Quality Management In Public Sector, Case Study: Customs Service," Regional Science Inquiry, Hellenic Association of Regional Scientists, vol. 0(1), pages 153-168, June.
    10. Afanasyev, Dmitriy O. & Fedorova, Elena A. & Popov, Viktor U., 2015. "Fine structure of the price–demand relationship in the electricity market: Multi-scale correlation analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 215-226.
    11. Peter Viggo Jakobsen, 2009. "Small States, Big Influence: The Overlooked Nordic Influence on the Civilian ESDP," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 81-102, January.
    12. Julie Holland Mortimer, 2007. "Price Discrimination, Copyright Law, and Technological Innovation: Evidence from the Introduction of DVDs," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1307-1350.
    13. Suwan Shen & Xi Feng & Zhong Ren Peng, 2016. "A framework to analyze vulnerability of critical infrastructure to climate change: the case of a coastal community in Florida," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 84(1), pages 589-609, October.
    14. Jean-Bernard Chatelain & Kirsten Ralf, 2017. "Can We Identify the Fed's Preferences?," Working Papers halshs-01549908, HAL.
    15. Billio, Monica & Casarin, Roberto & Osuntuyi, Anthony, 2016. "Efficient Gibbs sampling for Markov switching GARCH models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 37-57.
    16. Jan Babecký & Fabrizio Coricelli & Roman Horváth, 2009. "Assessing Inflation Persistence: Micro Evidence on an Inflation Targeting Economy," Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver), Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, vol. 59(2), pages 102-127, June.
    17. Lloyd, S. P., 2017. "Unconventional Monetary Policy and the Interest Rate Channel: Signalling and Portfolio Rebalancing," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1735, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    18. Fischer, Andreas M. & Ranaldo, Angelo, 2011. "Does FOMC news increase global FX trading?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 2965-2973, November.
    19. Mazzlida Mat Deli & Ruhizan Mohamad Yasin, 2016. "Quality Education of Orang Asli in Malaysia," International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, vol. 6(11), pages 233-240, November.
    20. Ichiro Fukunaga, 2007. "Imperfect Common Knowledge, Staggered Price Setting, and the Effects of Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(7), pages 1711-1739, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:empleg:v:5:y:2008:i:4:p:875-906. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1740-1461 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.