Arent Fox partner Bernice Leber, who is currently serving as president of the New York State Bar Association, has been published in this week's issue of The National Law Journal. Bernice's opinion piece, “Is the Legal System Ready,” explores how the  the courts and legal profession will need to respond to the current economic downturn.

“The courts will be asked to sort out a tangled array of issues from home foreclosures to business loan defaults, to class action and individual securities suits over financial products, to criminal actions, to executive compensation. And no amount of action taken by the executive and legislative branches can remedy the financial emergency of citizens who walk up the courthouse steps for immediate help. After all, courts are where the public goes for relief and for final judgment, not to politicians," Bernice writes. “Make no mistake: These are no abstract, intangible legal issues at stake. Courts will be making critical decisions on issues touching the daily lives of countless Americans: home foreclosures, pension system failures, credit card defaults, business takeovers and restructurings and more.”

Bernice prescribes three remedies to help the legal system address the national economic crisis:

• Americans who are facing the loss of their homes or other dire consequences of the credit crunch must have the right to legal representation in court.

• The judicial system must have the resources it needs to keep pace with the coming waves of litigation, or delays in administering to the public's needs will plainly make matters even worse.

• The ongoing “brain drain” of too many of our best and brightest judges, who are being driven away, discouraged by undercompensation and an underfunded system, must halt.  

To read Bernice's complete National Law Journal op-ed, please click here.