Editor’s Note: U.S. District  Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York received the Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence at the Federal Bar Council’s Law Day dinner Wednesday night at the Grand Hyatt New York. He used the occasion to ask the guests to find a way to make legal services more affordable. The New York Law Journal is running his remarks on that in their entirety.

It is a terribly sad fact that our legal system has priced itself out of the reach of most ordinary Americans. Let me start with some rather dismal statistics, most of them compiled by the National Center for State Courts.