Legal institutions are used increasingly in modern society to mediate disputes and resolve conflicts. Previous research and portrayals in popular culture, however, suggest that lawyers in the U.S. have a serious "image" problem and that clients are generally dissatisfied with the quality of their legal services. Dissatisfaction with lawyers and legal services can be disfunctional for society because it hampers the resolution of particular cases and may discourage the the use of law to resolve future conflict. This grant will provide a comprehensive examination of public opinion about legal remedies to disputes, and assess the extent, causes and consequences of client dissatisfaction with their legal services in disputes related to divorce, torts, and criminal complaints. While focus groups and personal interviews will be used in the early stages of the research, the primary data will be derived from telephone surveys of a national probability sample of 1000 citizens. The survey gives particular attention to clients' perceptions of the style of lawyering and social power strategies used by their attorneys and how these factors influence ratings of procedural justice, satisfaction with legal services, and future intentions of using legal methods of dispute settlement. The results of this study will fill an important empirical gap in our understanding of public perceptions of lawyers and the use of legal remedies to redress disputes. Also, the results will contribute to theoretical discussions about the future utility of traditional legal solutions to interpersonal disputes in modern society.
