On December 27, James Walsh, of the Star Tribune newspaper, reported that Chief Judge Michael Davis has sent out a call for more attorneys’ volunteer representation of pro se civil litigants in federal court.
Walsh’s article, however, focuses on one outlandish pro se claim of a voodoo love spell cast on an errant husband, not the kind of case that most lawyers would conclude warrants their time and resources (or the courts’).
One has to think that this is not the kind of P.R. that the Chief Judge had in mind to get the attention of lawyers to sign up for his program to help civil litigants.
The article provides no information on the general nature of the pro se cases brought in federal court in Minnesota other than to say that the one case discussed in the article is an “admittedly unique case [among] about 300 filed in federal court in Minnesota each year.”
Perhaps it would have been more useful, maybe even more interesting, if a little less amusing, to focus on the meritorious claims of indigent people whose claims go unvindicated for lack of representation.
I sent this comment to the Star Tribune, which published it on Saturday, January 3.