Alison Peck

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Day 290: Disrupt Access to Justice!

Photo by Mélodie Descoubes on Unsplash

Sometimes I receive inquiries for immigration legal services that make me want to break things.

Cases where an individual didn’t get a lawyer and failed to navigate all the narrow straits of the legal system. Cases where the government made administrative errors but with no legal remedy. Cases where a person experienced discrimination while in custody.

This was one of those days.

Disrupting the Law

Days like this are the reason I decided to teach Entrepreneurship for Lawyers.

It’s infuriating that our legal system works (or fails) this way.

It’s insane that our country will provide a public defender for someone who gets charged with a misdemeanor but not for someone who faces removal to a country where their life is in danger.

It’s unacceptable that money or chance drives whether or not a person has a second chance.

I haven’t yet figured out how to disrupt the way that legal services get allocated in our society. But if I can’t figure these things out, I hope the students in Entrepreneurship for Lawyers can.