• they cannot afford the services of a lawyer
• no lawyer wants to defend them for various reasons.

In such cases

• The prisoner can defend himself
• The court will appoint a lawyer

The second one is the greater challenge as it requires a review of existing policy and a change in existing culture. The upside is that, with the possible exception of the CLE departments, Bars do not compete against each other. The fact that it is possible for Bars to cooperate make this second challenge surmountable. The bottom line on this is that Bars have to do this anyway. As reciprocity and MJP continue to grow the sharing of information is inevitable. The question is just how to do this in a timely manner while maintaining everyone’s comfort level.  Some see that the growing Bar Consortium as the facilitator and voluntary standards body to deal with the policy and procedure questions so that Bars do not have to tackle this issue over and over again.

With reciprocity, multi-jurisdictional practice, and the increasing potential mobility of a lawyer’s practice mandatory Bars are going to be experiencing increasing pressure to keep pace.

Some of the ideas that might illustrate the potential of a shared data system:

A lawyer relocates from one state to another. Both Bars are on the BarAlliance system and so the member makes a request to have his record and CLE history transfered to the new state.

A lawyer has a practice in two states each of which has a mandatory CLE reporting requirement. Both states have a reciprocity agreement so that when the lawyer has the CLE attendance filed it is filed with both states at the same time.

A state Bar on the BarAlliance system subcontracts the system to a smaller regional or specialty Bars in the area providing that Bar or Bars with access to the system for a small fee which helps to defray the costs.

A Bar director that is new to the BarAlliance system opens the shared reports library to look at reports that are in use by other Bars. Finding that Hawaii has an excellent transaction history report the director has the Hawaii report imported to his or her Bar’s system.

A Bar undergoes a change in its rules or policies that require a change in the Rules Control system on their BarAlliance system. The system admin for the Bar goes to a Rules Library to see if there is already a similar rule in place at another Bar. Finding one, the system admin has it pulled into their BarAlliance system.