Councilors to study providing lawyers to tenants facing eviction

Housing Court is an absolute s-show. Having both parties represented by lawyers makes the process infinitely easier for all involved, including landlords. 99% of the time they'll settle the matter and be done with it.

when the annual cost of attendance even for New England School of Law is over $90,000 (at 8.05% interest on GradPLUS loans!) and the GOP just floated their fourth or fifth proposal in the last eight years to reauthorize the Higher Education Act in a manner that would eliminate most income-based repayment plans (and GradPLUS loans, for that matter), one does wonder just how long any such program would be feasible. The payment rate (for independent lawyers) and/or salary (if the lawyers are hired full-time for this sort of work) would be grossly inadequate to service law school loans from any of Boston/Cambridge's law schools, all of which between $250,000 and $333,000 for three years of tuition and living expenses. That works out to a standard monthly repayment of a couple thousand dollars a month, after taxes, and most state lawyering positions start out somewhere in the $45,000 to $60,000 range. It is ONLY through income-based repayment plans that public service lawyering jobs can be filled,* and the GOP has long been signalling that those plans are toast the next time they control the executive and legislative branches.

And there are at least two SCOTUS justices (Thomas, Gorsuch) who have publicly written about their disdain for Gideon v. Wainwright, which is the case that guarantees counsel for criminal defendants, and I wouldn't be surprised if at least Alito and Roberts could be prodded into that position as well. Things could get a lot worse for the right to counsel for anyone who can't pay out of pocket.

*Honestly it is only through income-based repayment plans that MOST lawyering jobs outside of the Ropes & Grays of the world can be fulfilled; the last analysis I saw (Wall Street Journal, 2021) indicated that two years after graduation only 1 in 3 lawyers have managed to pay down even a dollar of principal. That can basically be read as "Only 1 in 3 law grads makes enough money to afford their standard student loan payment and in a world without income-based repayment plans the other 2 in 3 would likely be in default."

The taxpayers are providing lawyers for people who might be the offender? Are we providing lawyers to the landlords too?

You want more housing. Well people get evicted from their homes when developers by a triple decker, knock it down and put up 6 or 8 luxury condos. So next time you people say build it, remember the people who get displaced.