Rethinking the Full-Service Legal Representation Model: A Maryland Experiment
![handle is hein.journals/clear30 and id is 1198 raw text is: Rethinking the Full-Service Legal
Representational Model: A Maryland
Experiment
by Michael Millemann, Nathalie Gilfich, and Richard Granat
[Editor's note. Advocates across the country remain committed to continuing to pro-
vide legal services to the poor. Advocates are designing new and effective ways to
deliver quality legal services to low-income clients. Their efforts are highlighted in
this periodic column on the redesign of legal services delivery.]
I. Introduction
In this article we describe an experimental project in which law students provide
legal information and advice to otherwise unrepresented parties in family law
cases.1 We argue that lawyers generally, and legal services programs particularly,
should make more use of such limited representational models.2 We identify some
problems produced by limited representation, as well as possible solutions, and
propose some related access-to-justice law reform measures.
We offer an assisted pro se project as but one part of an appropriate continu-
um of legal services. That continuum should include several different legal services
levels, incrementally more intensive, between the information-only and full-service
Michael Millemann is director of
the Clinical Law Program at the
University of Maryland School of
Law, 510 W Baltimore St.,
Baltimore, MD; (410) 706-3295.
Nathalie Gilfrich is director of the
Family Law Assisted Pro Se
Project, and Richard Granat is a
project consultant. Both are
adjunct clinical law faculty mem-
bers. For acknowledgements
see footnote 1.
We thank the 40 or so clinical law students who, to date, have provided legal informa-
tion and advice to over 6,000 unrepresented people in Maryland. Judge Alan M. Wilner,
chief judge, Court of Special Appeals of Maryland, was the initial proponent of the pro-
ject. We thank him and the judges, masters, administrators, and clerks in Anne Arundel
County, Baltimore City, and Montgomery County for their essential support. We also
appreciate the many contributions of Frank Broccolina, deputy state court administrator,
Maryland Administrative Office of the Courts; Robert Rhudy, executive director of the
Maryland Legal Services Corporation; and Herbert Garten, president of the Maryland
Legal Services Corporation and chair of the Maryland Moderate Income Access to Justice
Advisory Task Force. Esther Lardent, Sara-Ann Determan, and Will Homsby, Jr., offered
us many good ideas and much encouragement. We also thank Dr. Raymond
Paternoster, who evaluated the project (see note 12 infra); Rosemarie Loverde, who
helped administer the project and who typed this article; and the other participants in
this project, some of whom we recognize in note 10 infra. The important role of law
students is described in Joan L. O'Sullivan et al., Ethical Decisionmaking and Ethics
Instruction in Clinical Law Practice, 3 CLIN. L. REV. 109, 154-55 (1996).
2 Some call such forms of limited legal help discrete task or unbundled legal services.
See generally Forrest S. Mosten, Unbundling of Legal Services and the Family Lauyer, 28
FAM. L.Q. 421, 426 (1994) (citing ABA STANDING COMM. ON THE DELIVERY OF LEGAL SERvs.,
RESPONDING TO THE NEEDS OF THE SELF-REPRESENTED DIVORCE LrIGANT (1994)). We use these
two terms and the term limited representation interchangeably in this article. See text
accompanying note 9 infra for the American Bar Association (ABA) definition of dis-
crete-task representation.
CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW I MARCH-APRIL 1997
1178](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/clear30&div=132&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Rethinking the Full-Service Legal Representation Model: A Maryland Experiment
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