Direito em Movimento - Volume 18 - Número 3 - Edição Especial

185 ARTIGOS Direito em Movimento, Rio de Janeiro, v. 18 - n. 3, p. 176-198, 2020 - Ed. Especial legal advice or sound judgments that establish clear precedents so that liti- gation becomes unnecessary. Client satisfaction is yet another possible measure of success, but here we should bear in mind the problem of asymmetry of information: most clients are ‘one-shotters’ and not ‘repeat-players’ or legal experts, and they therefore are not in a position to make an informed judgment about the quality or accuracy of legal decision-making or professional legal advice, though client feedback on this advice could well tell us something valuable about the communication skills of their adjudicator or legal advisor. But, perhaps, not much more than that. And we should not forget some court cases benefit broader interests beyond those of the parties most directly involved and, furthermore, that enforcing collective rights through ‘mega-litigation’ that targets the un- derlying causes of injustice can be highly efficient, both for courts and par- ties, when compared to correcting minor, perhaps trivial, individual claims. Where reformers limit themselves to the resolution of small claims, this sometimes does little to empower individuals or enhance citizenship and, as more radical critics of the justice system might argue, simply applies a ‘band-aid’ solution that in the long-run does little more than reinforce, firs- tly, professional power and status; and secondly, a fundamentally unequal and unjust social order (BANKOWSKI & MUNGHAM, 1976, p. 72-79). At this point, it is instructive to remember Abel’s analysis of the politics of informal justice (ABEL, 1981). Abel recognises that infor- mal processes can produce ‘creative conflict’, particularly if they em- power and transform parties, and equally that not all forms of legal formalism are repressive. So, we might ask, to what extent does IJ do more than secure indi- vidual documentation (marriage, birth certificates etc) that may confirm citizenship - though not necessarily access to essential services relating to health, education or housing - and deal with the collective needs of Indige- nous and non-Indigenous remote communities, or environmental protec- tion, and so engage with ‘structural’, rather than just ‘individual’ casework?