Class actions are an exciting tool for cause lawyers — lawyers who choose their cases to champion particular ideals and goals. The excitement surrounding class actions stems from their potential to create broad-based change, and to augment access to justice for unempowered people whose cases would otherwise go unlitigated. This enthusiasm should, however, be tempered by the lessons and principles of cause lawyering literature, which is concerned with avoiding power imbalances and disconnect between lawyers and clients. Cause lawyering literature has produced good and useful principles to guide lawyers in their interaction with individual clients. When these principles — autonomy, collaboration, the importance of personal relationships, and community involvement — are transposed to the class setting, some troubling issues arise. The structure of class proceedings makes it difficult to apply these principles at each stage of class proceedings, from the pre-certification stage through to settlement. When cause lawyers become class counsel they risk becoming disconnected from their service community. The issues of power imbalance, meaningful representation, and instrumentalizing community members come to the forefront once more. Cause lawyers should be cognizant of these potential pitfalls, and may consider alternative approaches to the management of class actions in order to reflect the principles in cause lawyering literature. These approaches may include tactics to involve more community members, or even community groups in steering litigation, or leveraging the alternative dispute resolution powers of class proceedings.
Adrienne Lipsey (Sat,) studied this question.