RATIONING LEGAL SERVICES

There is a deepening crisis in the funding of legal services in the USA with cut backs in Legal Services Corporation and Interest on Lawyers Trust Account funding, rendering more visible the fact that there is and always will be persistent scarcity in the availability of both criminal and civil legal assistance. This article examines how existing Legal Service Providers (LSPs), both civil and criminal, should ration their services when they cannot help everyone. I draw on the bioethics literature on the allocation of medical goods (organs, ICU beds, vaccine doses, etc.) to illuminate the problems facing LSPs and the potential rationing principles they might adopt.