This is Planet Money from NPR.

When John Malo graduated from law school, he started weighing his options.

Like maybe I should go into litigation.

I don't know, too much paperwork.

Maybe I'll go into corporate law?

Too boring.

And I decided I'm going to do neither of the two.

I became a tax lawyer.

Okay, but you were trying to avoid boringness.

I was trying to avoid boringness, but I became a tax lawyer.

John does tax law for a bit.

He clerks for a few years, spent some time as a litigator.

And the more he practices law, the more this one idea keeps nagging at him.

It's a thing that looks to him like a fundamental flaw of the justice system.

There's a problem in the system that really the courts and the rules committees can't address.

Namely that if one party's better able to deal with the expense and the risk than the

other, that's going to skew the outcome.

The person who doesn't have the money is not going to be able to get justice.

Money.

Money is the elephant in the courtroom.

John sees that often justice doesn't hinge on what's right or what's wrong, but rather

how much right or wrong can people or companies afford.

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