While chatting with a friend who is studying law, I had an epiphany. It's currently the case that people who can afford better lawyers have justice tilted in their favour. What needs to happen is:
Lawyer Handicaps!
The way this would work is that every lawyer would have a rating, initially based on his/her university marks, but as his/her career progresses it would be more based on his performance as a lawyer in court. When two lawyers go head to head in a case, the one with the lower handicap (ie. the weaker lawyer) would get less time to talk, be allowed to call less witnesses, etc. If the handicap difference was really large, then the better lawyer would get more interruptions from the judge, or might have to wear a funny hat or Groucho Marx disguise, to even things up. Objections from the weaker lawyer would carry more weight. If one side had more lawyers, you'd add up their handicaps according to some clever formula.
In this way, the current system whereby you just the best justice you can afford would be made fairer.
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