Alyce Wittenstein’s “Closing Argument”

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I remember all throughout my life, because my father was a personal injury lawyer, how they were coming to take away our contingency fees and how, the same people that are now walking around with pitchforks supporting the orange guy were always trying to get rid of contingency fees because they’re dangerous. They’re dangerous because they hold corporations in check. Without contingency fees, people that didn’t have a lot of money couldn’t afford to hire attorneys to go up against big companies. It’s interesting they had these congressional hearings about social media and I was very surprised to hear Lindsey Graham talking about the importance of contingency fees and the ability to sue social media companies when children are harmed because of the lack of safeguards. That’s the problem with a lot of the other aspects of the legal profession.

 

I think that they should allow contingency fees for divorces, which they don’t in New York. Which means that the poor person in the couple, which is usually the woman, and the woman is usually also saddled with juggling, working, and the care of the kids, even though they say it’s joint custody, the women end up most of the time still doing most of it. And having less money, and then they have to pay an attorney, but they don’t have the money to pay an attorney. So the wealthier person ends up completely screwing them.

 

I think that contingency fees should be expanded so that more people have access to the law. One of the things I’d like to do, it’s on my bucket list, is to try to get some grants to handle these types of cases so that they can be prosecuted without charging people money they don’t have.