If suing became an ultra-easy one-click activity, I can see two things coming: 1. maybe that would force us to shape up our tort laws a little so that not everything under the sun was actionable and 2. maybe people and companies would stop misbehaving so much because they knew there was no longer a burden to suing them. A combination of 1 and 2 sound like a great outcome.
I’ve been unlucky enough to have good reason to sue a few times in the last few years.
The courts are essentially inaccessible to 99% of the population. You can go to small claims court where the limit for damages is $12,500 in California (less than a half year’s rent around here), or you can hire a lawyer and pay $50-100K minimum before the trial even starts (on both sides).
The upshot is that I’m out around $100K (spread across a few different incidents) with absolutely no legal recourse.
Anyway, more access to the courts (and faster/more painful rejection of nuisance suits) would go a long way to fixing our legal system.
It would also be good if private individuals could directly press criminal charges.
> or you can hire a lawyer and pay $50-100K minimum before the trial even starts
What are those lawyers doing that’s worth so much, and that one cannot do themselves if they have time and mental capacity for it?
I don’t know about courts (though I managed my way through a simple divorce case without any need for a lawyer), but e.g. immigration attorneys are typically drastically overpriced for the services they provide - and I’ve dealt with six immigration events (two people, two countries, four events obtaining new residencies and two renewals, all six sharing a lot but being different situations under different clauses - lottery, income, marriage, family reunion) without any significant issues. Contrary to every single lawyer it wasn’t some rocket science - just stuff to learn, forms to fill and protocols to follow. And this makes me wonder if legal is actually as inaccessible and as risky to a layman as lawyers picture it…
This is like stating, "What are software engineers doing that's worth so much? There's plenty of free code courses online."
It reminds me of the old story of the plumber being called to a house that's leaking water out of a pipe, and the plumber looks around, finds one valve and gives it a half turn, and then writes a bill for 100$. The home owner is outraged he is charging so much for just a couple of minutes, and the plumber responds, "You aren't paying me to turn a valve, you are paying me to know which valve to turn."
Sure you could learn the law and represent yourself, but you can't expect results to be as good as anyone who practices law might do. It's a knowledge field, and experience matters.
> This is like stating, "What are software engineers doing that's worth so much? There's plenty of free code courses online."
Well, that’s not perfectly accurate comparison. When adjusted for nuances it’s much less clear what’s best. If a quick course is all you really need to get something done, and there are no e.g. maintenance concerns (so you don’t care if something is merely acceptable and not up to the best standards - as I get it, without any research, the case is effectively an one-off thing), and the professional services are notoriously costly, it makes me wonder why. In such scenario DIY approach looks very compelling to me.
Because I’ve heard the same thing about immigration and it turned out to be false. My current understanding is that there are a lot of immigration cases that may need a lawyer but a lot more where it’s a total waste of money.
Of course I can be wrong. There are always nuances and differences. That’s why I’ve asked what makes it so costly.
seems reasonable to add an initial cost burden to the filer then, to pay for the review, especially if they are filing a lot of suits. Say first 10 suits per year are free, but then you need to get on the premium plan :D
If the goal is to disincentivize all people from making frivolous lawsuits, that cost burden sharing should probably be proportional to the person’s free resources somehow. A percentage of wealth or income or something like that.
I’d rather have a tractable thought process which can be interrogated decide whether or not I can sue a corporation rather than an automated black box.
The whole point of law is that it’s humans regulating other humans. Not machines (in this case, built by wealthy humans) regulating humans.
I do think it’s an arms race where in many instances legal filing will be aided by AI and then the other party will also use AI to synthesize and summarize the filings or do similar analysis. The filings themselves will not actually be written or read by real human beings
Just keep small claims like that in small claims court. Then auto-Ronald has to send $500/hr general counsel instead of farming it out to a law firm and that makes it impractical for them to sue little people.
1. Only a handful of states prohibit hiring representation for small claims court.
2. McDonalds could make it so to get inside you have to agree to arbitration of any disputes. That's usually just used by companies to make you use arbitration instead of the courts when you have a complaint, but offhand I can't think of any reason they couldn't require arbitration in the other direction.
I would bet on the opposite, new rules that prevent automation from gumming up the court system. The judiciary is going to be hostile to such approaches.
I imagine lawmakers would be amenable to rules that you can't use GenAI to make legal filings, or that forced arbitration can now use AI to "screen" claims.
The courts are not for the little guy with little claims, nor are they a high volume system.
Any attempt to craft legislation to deal with this that could be construed as helping large corporations would be immediately shot down in our current political environment. But this is going to be a huge problem that costs jobs and harms the economy if something isn't done about it.
