Lawyers aren't Rent ?

An article in the Stanford Law Review, provocatively titled “Lawyers Aren’t Rent,” has been kicking around in my mind for over a year. It challenges long-held assumptions about the indispensability of lawyers in advancing justice. Its authors argue that lawyers, like rent, are not a fixed cost required for the machinery of legal rights to operate. This is not merely an academic quip—it’s a radical reframing of how we might conceive the infrastructure of justice in America.

For decades, public interest lawyering has positioned attorneys as central figures in the architecture of rights enforcement. From prestigious Skadden Fellows (who today must answer for Skadden) to legal aid attorneys in overburdened housing courts, the image of the lawyer-as-savior has dominated the narrative. Yet what if the presence of lawyers is not the sine qua non of justice, but sometimes its obstacle?

The authors of “Lawyers Aren’t Rent” contend that overreliance on legal professionals can actually narrow the horizon of justice. Lawyers, shaped by elite institutions, bar associations, and risk-averse funding structures, are often poor translators of collective struggle. They may file lawsuits when communities want to protest. They may pursue incremental reforms when clients want to burn the system down. Lawyers are trained to operate within the logic of courts, not to question the logic itself.

This raises a crucial dilemma: can we fight for justice without centering lawyers?

On the ground, in housing courts, immigration dockets, and debt collection proceedings, the answer is already emerging. Across the country, tenants are organizing without attorneys. Immigrants are forming rapid response networks. Court watchers and jail support groups are reshaping the terrain of legal accountability. These movements don’t erase lawyers—they de-center them. They remind us that justice is not the exclusive domain of JD-holders, and that people can build power even without access to formal legal representation.

Still, there’s a risk in swinging the pendulum too far. Lawyers are not rent, but they are not expendable either. A well-trained, culturally competent, movement-aligned lawyer can be a formidable ally. The law, for all its limitations, still grants the state power to detain, dispossess, deport. Lawyers can serve as shields, translators, and disruptors—when they are embedded in the communities they serve and accountable to more than just funders or courts.

The challenge, then, is not to abolish lawyers, but to unseat them from the center. To see them not as protagonists, but as support actors in a larger story of collective liberation. To redesign legal systems so that laypeople can assert rights without having to beg a lawyer to show up.

“Lawyers Aren’t Rent” is not a rejection of the legal profession. It’s a call to humility, to partnership, and to imagination. It reminds us that the future of justice in America will be built by movements, not resumes.

And perhaps, in that future, lawyers will earn their place—not through credentials, but through solidarity.

Above is an AI-generated podcast about the law review article “Lawyers aren’t Rent.” I think it’s quite good at framing this issue. What do you think?