As we have talked about before, the amount of civil law lawyers available to the public is dramatically less than what is needed in this country. Civil cases do not have a right to defense, even though a civil case can end with a person going to jail, losing custody of their children, losing health care coverage, or losing a home. Out of the five people who need a civil lawyer’s help, four of those people do not have access to it.
Landlords, creditors, and companies always have lawyers, tenants and debtors almost never do.
While most state bar associations support a civil right to counsel, and 18 different states are considering laws to guarantee a lawyer in certain civil situations, but we may have a long time to wait until that time. So what can be done in the meantime? Well, Matthew Stubenberg may have an answer that can help ease one of the burdens associated with lack of available civil law help.
While a student of law at University of Maryland in 2010 doing a clinic full of expungements -helping clients fill out and file petitions to erase qualifying parts of a criminal record. Even if there is no conviction, and even if there is, there are some lifelong ramifications to the effects of the records that can include homelessness from inability to get a job.
Maryland has a public database called Case Search that you can use to pull up relevant information to help you fill out the required parts of the forms, but the information transfer process can be long and tedious. “We spent all this time moving data from Case Search onto our forms,” Stubenberg said. “We spent maybe 30 seconds on the legal piece. Why could this not be easier? This was a problem that could be fixed by a computer.”
After law school he dusted off his coding skills and built a software that automatically transferred the tedious work into the new forms, helped determine if the case can, in fact, be expunged under the guidelines, and prints a completed form needing only a signature and filing with the court. Called MDExpungement, it puts one more thing that a civilian can do into their own hands. In October of 2015 there was a change in a Maryland law that made more cases applicable for the expunging process. Between October 2015 and March 2016, people filed almost eight thousand petitions in Baltimore City District Court, and more than two-thirds of those petitions came from MDExpungement.
While there are legal groups that are fighting to help bring civil law aid to those who cannot afford a lawyer in almost every state, the more that people can utilize technology to build systems that help, rather than disenfranchise, those who cannot afford legal counsel, the better off we all will be in the long run. We have made some strides in this area in regards to credit, taxes, and other financial applications. The next step is to make civil law easier to navigate on your own.
After the ruling of the grand jury involved in the case of police brutality in Ferguson, Charles Ogletree, a Harvard Law School Professor, answered a few questions on the legality of the ruling, according to an 
It has become a standard amongst American society that when the individual sees they have been wronged, they are able to take their assumedly powerful foe to court. The proceeding trial is often envisioned as a dramatic battle between good and evil, with the wronged party assuming they will always win, and manage to extract some monetary compensation out of the ordeal. However, this standard amongst society in the United States can often be taken too far, in the eyes of some Republicans.
A new online article done by the “Austin Business Journal” discusses recent action taken by Texas civil right groups. The civil rights groups are suing cab companies for violations regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act. The two civil rights groups in question are ADAPT and Texas Civil Rights Project. They have filed over 30 lawsuits across Texas against Uber, Lyft, and Yellow Cab stating that these companies do not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In a recent article by United States Department of Labor, wage and hour division is discussed. In this article, many questions about minimum wage law are answered. A common question that many US citizens ask is, “how much is federal minimum wage?” The Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) says that the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. This has been in effect since July 24, 2009. In many states, citizens are entitled to both the state and federal minimum wage laws- meaning the employee is entitled to the higher minimum wage. That being said, there are also numerous exceptions apply under certain circumstances such as to workers with disabilities, full-time students, youth under the age of 20 and tipped employees.
One very common type of civil law case is that of wrongful termination. Wrongful termination can fall under many categories. The first is discrimination. It is illegal for an employer to fire an employee because of their race, religion, sex, nationality, age, and in some jurisdictions, sexual orientation. A couple of weeks ago, a Houston man by the name of Odell Hyden, filed a lawsuit against his company for age discrimination. Hyden had worked for Hagemeyer and its predecessor for over 50 years, and in April of 2013, he was let go for “poor performance.” Hyden alleges that this had nothing to do with performance and everything to do with his age. He is accusing his company for age discrimination, retaliation, and violations of the Human Rights Act.