When justice became a product For most of American history, hiring a plaintiff-side trial attorney was boring by design. They were a last resort to help return a client as closely as possible to where they were before harm occurred. The goal was repair, not vindication. That changed in 1977, w hen the SCOTUS ruled that trial lawyers could legally advertise on television, radio, and in print. The decision was meant to expand access and protect free speech rights. In that sense, it succeeded. But it also transformed the attorney-client relationship in ways we rarely examine. Once legal services became a mass-market retail product, incentives shifted. Attorneys were no longer primarily serving clients who had exhausted other options and simply wanted to move on with their lives. They were now competing to attract clients by monetizing grievance. The professional task quietly changed—from restoring loss and resolving harm to public signaling and maximizing punishment. This shift is visible in how legal services are marketed. Look at any personal injury billboard along I-25. Firms compete on emotional validation and on the largest dollar amounts of judgments they claim to have extracted—not on whether those judgments were proportional. This marketing also quietly shifts society’s default expectation from “most people have integrity, but for those who don’t, force is sometimes the only option” to “no one does and force must be ready to be deployed at any moment”. We do not outsource policing to private firms because we understand that doing so would multiply coercive action by placing profit incentives behind its use. Yet this is effectively what we have done with civil litigation. When state-backed force becomes a market commodity, capitalism does what it always does: it increases availability and amplifies demand. Applied to litigation, those incentives reward volume, emotional intensity, and conflict escalation—not proportional response, reconciliation, or truth. The effects extend far beyond the courtroom. Schools, hospitals, employers, and social services now act under constant litigation threat. Decisions are shaped less by what is right than by what avoids them being blamed for anything. This shift alone did not turn our country into a low-trust society. But by placing profit behind grievance and punishment, it poured gasoline on an already smoldering fire. With no societal expectation of integrity, having it then becomes a weakness. And if the only cross-class, cross-race institution with any trust left is the courtroom, we should ask whether this has truly been progress. James Lane Colorado Springs Academy grads achieving Hello from Cleveland Ohio and Happy New Year. Excited to announce and congratulations to Former Air Force Linebacker Demonte Meeks on his promotion to Captain in the United States Air Force. How many great examples of an Academy grad amoung many who are Fighting Falcons Serving The Oath are actually highlights of new article topics when choosing Service is the Mission of the Academy? Excited to read more stories of upcoming career opportunity announcements on graduated players from the Academy. Shani Meeks Cleveland Heights ...read more read less