Court Opinion

ID: 9673226
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:08:41.216657+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:20.948033
License: Public Domain

Williams, J.
(to concur). While I concur with the Court and agree with the necessity of skilled professional assistance in legal matters, neither the Court nor the Chief Justice has directly adverted to the root problem behind this case.
Virginia Cramer is only a symptom of the problem created by the failure of the legal profession to see that sufficient skilled legal services are reasonably available and within the means of all people. A vacuum has been allowed to exist. If *139Virginia Cramer had not sought to fill it, some one like her would have done so.
Recently when the Office of Economic Opportunity made legal services obtainable by many who up until then had not had legal services available to them, divorce work was found to be one of the areas of greatest need. The Legal Aid and Defender Association of Detroit, for example, opens its doors to divorces three times a year for about a day or two, and obtains enough divorce cases in that period of time to supply a caseload of 180-200 per attorney. Before that system was introduced, they used to get 18 new cases a day.
It is said that the very rich and the very poor have access to lawyers, but it is generally admitted that middle-income groups do not have adequate legal services. The American Bar Association and the Michigan State Bar have displayed commendable concern about this problem in the last few years. For example, the Michigan State Bar has given good leadership in developing prepaid legal service programs. However, it cannot yet be said that the legal profession has made more than an acceptable beginning in coming to grips with the legal problems of middle-income groups or in adequately serving the needs of the poor.
With the need for counseling and advice so overwhelming, lawyers are going to have to make greater efforts and exercise more ingenuity in satisfying need, because, for every Virginia Cramer that is brought to book a number more will rise in her place. The courts must continue to use traditional means to protect the public against unprofessional practice of the law. But the fact of the matter is that neither court orders nor prison cells will adequately solve the root problem in this case.
*140The answer to the problem is boldly proclaimed to all who can read in the Michigan State Bar building in Lansing. There emblazoned is the following:
"No organization of lawyers can long survive which has not for its primary object the protection of the public.”
In this matter, protection of the public will not be achieved by more of the same, but prompt, positive, vigorous and imaginative action to make skilled professional services available to those who have reasonable need of them. Verbum sat sapienti.
Levin, J., concurred, except for the first paragraph, with Williams, J.