IICJ | Civil Justice Colloquium: Kathryne Young - What Can Legal Knowledge Do for Access to Justice?

Hosted by the UC Irvine Initiative for Inclusive Civil Justice, the Civil Justice Colloquium welcomes Professor Kathryne Young (GW Law) to discuss "What Can Legal Knowledge Do for Access to Justice?"

Abstract

Worker misclassification is one of the most pervasive and harmful civil justice problems in the U.S. Inaccurate and illegal categorization of workers as independent contractors costs U.S. workers billions of dollars annually in overtime pay and health benefits—a problem that has become even more pervasive with the expansion of the gig economy.

Yet, worker misclassification is only one dimension of America’s broader “access to justice crisis”—the unsolved legal problems and unmet legal needs that especially impact the lives and livelihoods of low-income people and people of color. These legal issues range from consumer overbilling and insurance disputes to unsafe housing conditions and benefits denials. And just like worker misclassification, the onus for redress of these problems usually falls to the people experiencing them. For decades, legal scholars assumed that the main cause of the access to justice crisis was a deficit of affordable lawyers. In more recent years, that hypothesis has been disproven; the chief barrier turns out to be the simple fact that people do not think of their problems as “legal” in nature. The next step, then, seems obvious: raise legal awareness. Indeed, “know-your-rights” campaigns and legal self-help are predicated on the assumption that knowledge will lead to power. But is legal knowledge enough to spur legal action?

To test this crucial question, we leverage an original, nationally representative dataset of over three thousand U.S. residents. We use the context of worker misclassification to experimentally test how legal knowledge shapes the actions that people say they would take to solve a problem. We find that although legal knowledge increases legal action, its effects are more limited than conventional approaches assume: only one in four respondents considered pursuing legal help. Yet legal knowledge catalyzes problem-solving in an unexpected way: it empowers people to consider more varied solutions to worker misclassification. Specifically, it does so by reducing two key cognitive and affective barriers to action: self-blame and futility. We explain these findings’ implications for ending worker misclassification and solving the access to justice crisis.

About the Civil Justice Colloquium

In these colloquia, leading scholars on civil justice are invited to present their works-in-progress to a seminar class at UCI Law. Students are provided with additional readings that contextualize the work and are expected to engage deeply with presenters. This format allows students a unique opportunity to engage with cutting-edge scholarship across a range of topics related to civil justice. From empirical scholarship on the strategies people take in responding to civil legal problems to civil procedural scholarship investigating access to the courts, the series provides a multifaceted view of current challenges and opportunities in expanding access to civil justice.

Faculty from within and outside the law school, and anyone with a keen interest in civil justice is welcome to attend

To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu. 

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