Charlene and I just had a really funny conversation that I think reflects exactly why democratizing the law is so difficult. Charlene discovered a great website: Free Canadian Legal Resources. Their tag line is: “Democratizing the law one question at a time.” You may or may not know that Olea’s mission with this blog and our practice is to democratize the law too. In an off-hand comment Charlene said, “Geez, we should have copyrighted the idea of ‘democratizing the law!’”
There was a pause in the conversation just long enough for us both to realize how contradictory that would be and then we spent the next few minutes laughing at ourselves. The reason I bring it up is that it is very difficult not to try to claim credit for anything that is different or progressive. There are financial and professional incentives for trying to claim something as my own creation that make a thought like that automatic.
The irony is that evidently we didn’t come up with “Democratizing the Law” first although we did come up with it on our own. Hopefully this is a sign that the idea is spontaneously coming to people all over the world. The last thing that would help achieve actual democracy in the law would be to limit use of a term, but that is exactly the kind of thinking we have to learn to overcome as lawyers and professionals.
