"If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you."
Sure, but that only applies in criminal cases. What about civil suits, such as the recording industry's threats against alleged file sharers? Or "wrongful death" suits? Or personal injury suits?
Finding yourself in court is expensive, particularly if you can't find a pro bono lawyer. Often, the mere threat of a lawsuit is enough to get people to settle.
I'd like to see a volunteer organization dedicated to providing pro bono service to people facing civil lawsuits.
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Public defenders are currently overburdened just with criminal cases, which are a higher priority since a person's liberty is at risk. Resources should go to criminal cases first.
Is there any reason to believe that this can be solved by anything but the dedication of new resources to this task, and is there any reason to believe that these aren't the same resources that could be dedicated to criminal cases instead?
Most counties have a legal aid section to them, which helps people who need assitance getting veteran's benefits or stopping elder abuse, or things like that outside the criminal justice system, where a lawyer is still needed to do justice.
Yes, the spectre of the RIAA coming down on Granny over one illegal MP3 seems unjust, but what if the free civil lawyer goes both ways? We have Person A, who thinks Person B owes him $75k. Person B disagrees. Person A is poor so he gets a free lawyer to pursue the case? Person B is also poor, so he gets a free lawyer to defend the case? Talk about the ability to create mischief, bring millions of cases into the court system and bring the whole thing to a halt.
People dislike lawyers as it is. To provide a free lawyer to those in the civil justice system would require adding millions more of them, at taxpayer expense. It would never be approved by any state legislature.