Based on the reading, Plea bargaining originated in the United States in the 1970s. What is the status of plea bargaining around the world?

Reading

In addition, we're also seeing convergence with the rise of plea bargaining. Not all systems permit plea bargaining. In fact, most don't technically. In fact, it's prohibited in countries like Israel. But it is useful at saving judicial resources and speeding things along. So a lot of countries informally have engaged in some plea bargaining just because it is so useful. And so we're seeing plea bargaining adopted by more and more countries, at least in an informal way. There aren't that many countries that formally allow it. We're also seeing the decline of the jury trial across the world, although it really only ever existed in the English common law world. And today, it's only really common in the UK, Ireland, Canada, the US, and Australia and New Zealand. Some inquisitorial systems may use a jury in very specific sets of cases, like death penalty cases, or to resolve very narrow factual disputes-- was it light green or was it red when you went through the stop sign? Rather than, is the defendant innocent or guilty? In addition, a lot of inquisitorial systems like Germany or Scandinavian countries or South Africa or Japan have a system of lay assessors. Those are basically professional jurors. They sit in many cases with a judge. They're paid to -- they sit with a judge, and they help the judge pronounce on something. So a judge could sit with two lay assessors that'll sit as a panel. And that lay assessor will go from case to case and just hear things and help the judge resolve disputes. So you could have a system of lay assessors in place of a jury. That's more common in inquisitorial trial. One problem across the board is the legal aid gap. In many jurisdictions, there, quite frankly, aren't enough lawyers. Now, in the United States, that's hard to believe, because there's one lawyer for about every 250 people. But in a country like Tanzania, there's one lawyer for every 65,000 people. There's a huge legal aid gap, and that can work to the detriment of women and children, minorities, criminal defendants, especially in death penalty cases. They're especially vulnerable, because they don't have access to a lawyer. In certain cases, you could resolve this through simplified proceedings. So in some low level courts, you may be familiar with small claims court, but sometimes a family court or a landlord-tenant court, customary courts in a place like sub-Saharan Africa where you're resolving land disputes or inheritance or divorce, you may have simplified procedures to help you if you don't have a lawyer. But this still creates a problem, especially in rural areas, where there are very few lawyers, and especially for defendants who can't afford them. This leads to the problem of legal aid. There are many different legal aid schemes in different jurisdictions. I'll give you some of them here. One of them is a judicare model. A judicare model is a flat payment to every lawyer who takes a case that needs legal representation. So for instance, to keep your law license in South Africa, you may need to do two cases a year for 500 rand apiece. So you get a flat payment for it. And every lawyer's got to do two cases a year of legal assistance to somebody who can't afford it in order to keep their law license. You could have a system like that. That's called a judicare model where you make all lawyers take on cases of people who can't afford a lawyer as a condition of keeping their law license. You could have public defenders, which are government-appointed legal advocates for people who can't afford lawyers. Legal clinics-- this is a legal clinic, either attached to a law school sometimes or a standalone clinic, these are modeled like community health clinics, which was a way of providing health care services to people in underserved communities. Legal clinics do the same thing essentially. And so sometimes, they specialize in certain types of cases. You can go to a landlord-tenant legal clinic which will take your case and help you in court or, perhaps, a family law clinic, tax law clinic, whatever you need. You can go to a clinic and lawyers that are there will assist you-- same with a health clinic. You could also use pro bono representation for free-- pro bono for free. Sometimes in some countries, it's called a pro deo system, for God. And in a few jurisdictions, it's a condition of a law license. You must do certain pro bono hours in representing indigent defendants. In the United States, it's very common to use a contingency for the arrangements. A lawyer will take your case and will get paid only if you win, but they'll receive a portion of the winnings. Not a lot of countries use contingency fee arrangements, but it is especially useful, especially in a class action-- another kind of American invention. But the class action makes it economically viable to bring a case in which a lot of people suffered a small amount of harm. You can aggregate those cases together and suddenly, it becomes viable to bring an action on behalf of the whole class. And lawyers who take those cases will receive a fee for that if they win. Another example in the United States is called IOLTA funding-- Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts. If you pay a lawyer a retainer, that retainer goes in a trust account, and the interest that accrues on that retainer goes to the local bar association to pay for legal services. So all US states have an IOLTA or IOLA funding scheme-- Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts-- that gives the money to the state bar association to redistribute for legal services. So there's a lot of ways in which legal services can be provided. But one persistent problem with legal aid is it often doesn't help the working class. It often doesn't help the lower middle class-- people who need lawyers but who aren't indigent enough to qualify for legal aid. But they also can't afford lawyers. So there's a gap there as well with working class or lower middle class people who can't afford a lawyer but need one and don't qualify for legal aid. One way of resolving the legal aid gap is to broaden legal representation to include legally trained persons, such as law students, paralegals, or lawyers licensed outside the jurisdiction-- foreign lawyers. Law student practice rules are very common in the United States and Canada-- that law students can go to court under the supervision of a lawyer and represent real clients.