The cost of free access to justice.

• Author: Salerno, Gerald Thomas
• Position: Letters - Letter to the editor

What President Ramon Abadin and the Florida Commission on Access to Civil Justice ("Filling the Civil Justice Gap with a New Business Model," Nov. 2015) have forgotten in that all these recommendations to provide free legal work and assistance to Floridians is that these measures detrimentally impact lawyers like me who unfortunately must charge a fee for my services. I am a solo practitioner for over 20 years and concentrate on criminal and family law. After reading the President's Page, I felt almost guilty about having to take payments from my clients. But my office building manager wants the rent this month and, of course, so do all the rest of the bill collectors, including my mortgage company and, of course, the orthodontist for my son's braces.

The commission and President Abadin make several false assumptions; thus, the whole premise of the proposed remedies is based on quicksand. Lawyers are not making (at least the ones who are solos like me) six-figure salaries. Litigants in family cases are mostly there by choice, and there is no where near 80 percent pro se litigants in the cases that I handle. In my humble opinion, pro se litigants in family cases are there with pride and boldly fresh with their Judge Judy and Law and Order television law school educations.

The president supports creating "civil legal assistants" and "broaden[ing] unbundled legal services...