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Show The National Enterprise, May 25. 1977 Page twenty-thre- e Legal Services Poor by Parker Neilson H former system in which all lawyers accepted court appointments on a pro bono basis. One of Gov. Jerry Brown's latest progressive causes is a proposal to require attorneys to donate 40 hours of professional time per year to public service. The goal is to deliver effective legal services to the poor and middle income groups who obtain services on a haphazard basis, if at all, under the present system. The argument is that lawyers enjoy what amounts to a monopoly by reason of the organized bar and therefore have an obligation to furnish services on a pro bono basis for those who cannot afford them. Z O CL CC It is doubtful if Brown's plan is even a progressive one. It looks more like a throwback to the former system, before the advent of legal defender offices and legal services corporations. Such a system, as the past has proven, would guarantee less, rather than more legal services. The majority of practicing lawyers simply have no expertise in problems of age discrimination, truth in lending, or criminal law which they would have to deal with during their 40 hours of involuntary servitude. It would be like asking your urologist to do brain surgery. Browns plan is like applying a bandaid to a ruptured aorta. Brown has a point, but his solution is a doubtful one. The manner in which legal services are delivered in this country has become disgraceful. The system largely caters to large corporations. The poor are at the mercy of public assistance programs, middle income persons are priced out and even the very wealthy find the cost of litigating their individual causes prohibitive. Only the corporations, to whom cost is not such a factor, can afford the luxury of resolving their disputes in court. Hi hZ 3 o o What is needed, I submit, is more attention to the root causes of costly legal services. The courts have developed complex discovery techniques, which make for a thorough and fair exploration of the facts on which a lawsuit turns, but at a cost which is often prohibitive. The burgeoning bureaucracy, spawned by the New Deal, was not accompanied with the development of public offices to help ordinary citizens find their w ay through the maze. Hundreds of thousands of tax dollars are spent to convene a grand jury and build a case against ordinary citizens, often groundless as in the recent Salt Lake County experience, who must then finance their defense as best they may. There is something wrong with a system that casts such expensive burdens on members of the public. However tempting it may be to make lawyers the scapegoats, however, that is not really a solution. Lawyers, after all, are mere functionaries in a system they did not have much of a hand in creating. Law'yers, moreover, recognize their obligation to a donate portion of their time pro bono (for the public good) and many of them do. While it might be desirable to stimulate them to respond better to this obligation, it would be no solution to require them to work on legal problems they are not equipped to deal with. Public defender offices were created specifically because it was found that corporate or tax lawyers, for example, were unable to provide an effective criminal defense under the if memo? to 5? SM8V WO$ SJR5. WOM&WUR&LF. ITS U& PimUPtlfc to im cRemc Meeermes e&me Tmx&cp&RW. owe sane to IMR. Trends such as these must either be reversed, or means devised to finance the process for the average person. It may not be too much to expect a society which pays administrators to create a bureaucratic tangle to also pay for lawyers to unravel it. UKB IT? & I TftlOK IT MAK55 e le&oue SICK. )HY 90 TMK Aeourtr WHY 90 UOO 0? IT $H OK& 6M55 MPOK5 SQ9S-S- U u. !MVgST16AnU3. CAUCR TOO"? SO MUCH? Pragmatic Dogmatics The problems off TV local news by Kent Shearer A recent study reflects adversely upon the local news and public affairs performance of Salt Lake Citys three commercial television stations. In terms of time allocated for transmission of this information, the Salt Lake outlets rank in the bottom ten percentile of the 140 stations that, nationwide, serve the fifty largest metropolitan markets. The greatest share of local news and public affairs time, writes Columbia Journalism Review editor James Boylan, is available in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Worth. Among the top fifty and Dallas-Fomarkets, those receiving the least are rt Green-ville-Spartanbu- rg, South Carolina; Salt Lake the Norfolk, City; Grand and San Antonio; Syracuse. Virginia area; Rapids-Kalamazo- o; is based upon a Howard University student analysis of 1976 reports filed, as required by law, by govemmentally licensed TV broadcasters with the Federal KUTV may well challenge or surpass this negative accomplishment in that it dropped its one hour 6:00 evening local news format effective January 17 of this year. These results prompt several observations. 101-655-40- First, those who sincerely seek information Public should shift their source priorities. opinion polls of recent years have made it clear beyond question that most Utahns rely upon television as their primary fount of local facts. Newspapers are a poor second, radio a distant third. The fact that TV is in default should occasion a change. Salt Lake has one excellent and another adequate daily newspaper. Additionally, there are useful specialty publications, including the Enterprise. Moreover, whatever the failings of their television sisters, KSL and KALL radio join KWMS in aggressive audio news reportage. This conclusion Communications Commission. The most deficient of the Salt Lake stations was KSL-Twhich was ninth from worst nationally with only 5.7 percent of its viewing time so dedicated. When the 1977 reports are filed, V, which can cancel or renew. Anyone who considers an outlet to be delinquent in its duty to inform the public may register that opinion by writing the FCC at 1919 M Street, Washington, D.C. 20554. Further information as to complaint procedure may be initiated by calling the commission at Second, the public should exercise its right to e comment upon whether the licenses of TV broadcasters should be continued by Unlike newspapers federal authorities. which, under the constitution, can be published by anyone with a printing press television channels each are granted by the Federal Communications Commission. That grant is reviewed periodically by the FCC, Third, completely apart from the threat of license revocation, broadcasters constantly should review how adequately they have fulfilled their obligation to inform their viewers. They should do this independent of an unhealthy emphasis upon ratings all too reminiscent of the movie Network. In particular, each should ask itself whether the scenario, so favored by happy news program consultants, is constructive or, more likely, a mere diversion. Each also should inquire whether sums spent advertising TV news teams could better be employed in beefing up both the substance and the extent of the news itself. news-spars- -- Finally, Utah should recognize that excellence of informational services is an essential portion of the overall quality of community life. That being the case, every element of our society should take all possible steps to remedy the television news defects the Howard University study reveals. |