Socialized legal defense? Government funded legal defense, with a private choice of the law firm to reduce pro-government biasses. Similar to how certain socialized healthcare systems work.
Of course, there are some glaring issues here, such as the fact that unfortunately there's a strong correlation between socio-economic status and the odds of you needing legal counsel... Something which also occurs in healthcare but to a much lesser degree I'm inclined to believe.
You are provided counsel when defending yourself if you cannot afford it. It is when you lose and do not accept a court's verdict. Even plead guilty to a good number of the charges and was given a sentence lower than requested by the prosecution.
there is a reason why non automatic appeals are not free, else those convicted could simply keep their cases open at cost to the tax payer when guilt had been properly assessed.
Gideon v. Wainwright established that indigent defendants are entitled to free legal representation. There's no such right for non-indigent defendants.
States establish indigence standards. Generally if your income exceeds 200% the federal poverty line, you aren't entitled to a court appointed attorney. Even then, if you're above 125% the poverty line, you can be forced to pay for your court appointed attorney. You can claim financial hardship, but the court isn't obliged to accept your claims.
That's not an issue at all, if the government just acts as a lender to whoever is going to lose.
That also has the added bonus of making people think twice about engaging people in civil suits and prevents people and bad prosecutors from using the legal system for blackmail.
Well, if you go with a "loser pays" system you run into the issue of false convictions and economic-disparity again.
If I were to barely break even at the end of each month, and was tried for a crime I didn't commit I might still consider pleading guilty because the actual punishment would be less than the results of the financial penalty incurred by defending yourself and losing.
If I were rich enough to easily pay the fees should I lose, I would risk it.
For criminal cases, that probably depends on the interest and repayment terms. If its means-contingent repayment without usurious interest, the incentive to plea guilty to avoid the cost of defense would be minimized, though the public expense would, correspondingly, be greater. OTOH, the expense would be going to assure that the guilty, and only the guilty, were punished and the government was less able to get away with punishing the poor-but-innocent to prevent a public image of dealing with problems while failing to actually get the guilty, so there is a public benefit (in addition to "protecting the rights of the accused") that comes from that public expense.
That's certainly a problem but it's a problem that would impact society overall negatively. Therefore I think it would be reasonable to weaken the "loser pays" system slightly, so that a balance between actual punishment and financial penalty is reached that prevents the latter from becoming an incentive to plead guilty. This could simply be done by having the government pay in these cases.
Of course, there are some glaring issues here, such as the fact that unfortunately there's a strong correlation between socio-economic status and the odds of you needing legal counsel... Something which also occurs in healthcare but to a much lesser degree I'm inclined to believe.