PROVIDENCE — If you’re charged with a crime that could put you behind bars and you can’t afford a lawyer, the government will provide you with one. But in most civil cases, if you can’t afford a lawyer, you’re on your own.

And as the old proverb says, a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client.

As part of the centennial of the federal courthouse in downtown Providence, a panel last week discussed the fact that many poor people don’t have a lawyer when they go to court to deal with serious matters such as eviction, deportation or the loss of a job.

“In courts across this country, day in and day out, people forfeit basic rights, sacrificing basic needs — not because the law and the facts are against them, but because they don’t have counsel,” New England School of Law Prof. Russell Engler said.

For example, about 90 percent of tenants don’t have lawyers in eviction cases, Engler said. “It means the typical case pits a represented party against an unrepresented one — a basic mismatch with devastating consequences,” he said.

In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in the case of Gideon v. Wainwright, saying, “Reason and reflection require us to recognize that in our adversary system of criminal justice, any person hauled into court who is too poor to hire a lawyer cannot be assured of a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him.”

On Wednesday, Engler and the other panelists delved into the idea of a “Civil Gideon,” discussing to what extent a similar right should apply in civil cases — in addition to the criminal cases the Supreme Court addressed.

Judge Charles P. Kocoras, a senior U.S. district judge for the Northern District of Illinois, said, “Any system of justice, to be worthy of respect and emulation, must be reasonably available to all of our citizens, whether rich or poor, bright or ignorant, wise or foolish.”

And he said the teachings of Gideon v. Wainwright are no less true in today’s criminal cases than they were in 1963.

“We all treasure liberty and freedom, and it is acknowledged that the loss of either must be accomplished in the fairest systems humans can devise,” Kocoras said. So, he asked, “how can it be less” when it comes to “things like custody and responsibility for children, the threat of loss of worldly possessions like homes and wealth, or the ability to live in a country that may provide equality of opportunity where others may not. The loss of any of these things may stain the person’s life in the future, perhaps even more than the loss of liberty for a fixed period.”

But who would pay lawyers to represent indigent people in civil cases?

Lawyer Howard A. Merten, who moderated the panel discussion, quoted from the State of the State address last Tuesday, in which Governor Carcieri said Rhode Island is teetering on the brink of financial disaster. He asked the panelists how the legal representation would be paid for.

Kocoras said, “In days of tight governmental budgets — when are they ever not tight? — the case that lawyers for poor parties in civil cases should be paid for by the government competes with funding for health care, housing needs, transportation needs of every stripe, the plights of farmers, the funding of wars and a thousand more causes.”

Also, Kocoras said, “Politicians and government officials have failed to solve the profound issues of immigration in any substantive or meaningful way.” So, he asked, “How can we then realistically expect them to require American citizens to pay for lawyers for people who may well be in the United States illegally in order to contest their status?”

Engler said he doesn’t know of any Civil Gideon advocates who say every litigant in every civil case should be entitled to a lawyer. In some cases, litigants can get help that falls short of having a lawyer represent them from the beginning to the end of a case, he said. And the Civil Gideon idea should be viewed in the context of “broader access-to-justice initiatives.”

But, Engler emphasized, “This is not a pie in the sky that can wait. There’s too many litigants suffering dire consequences where basic needs are at stake in the courts who need our attention now.”

An estimated 80 percent of the legal needs of the poor go unmet, Engler said. “Particularly in the state courts, although this carries over into the federal courts, the courts are flooded with people in civil cases where people don’t have lawyers,” he said. “There’s a lot of reasons for that. The most common is they can’t afford it.”

Engler said one significant step was taken in 2006 when the American Bar Association urged federal and state governments “to provide legal counsel as a matter of right at public expense to low-income persons in those categories of adversarial proceedings where basic human needs are at stake, such as those involving shelter, sustenance, safety, health or child custody.”

Judge Herbert P. Wilkins, a retired chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and a visiting professor at Boston College law school, called the American Bar Association resolution a “noble concept.” But, he said, “It’s certainly one that, frankly, is not realistic, at least at this time.”

“Clearly,” Wilkins said, “there is a funding problem here.” But he recently chaired the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission, which proposed a variety of possible solutions.

Under one proposal, called “limited representation assistance,” lawyers would enter an appearance in just a portion of a case, he said. Under another proposal, called “ghost writing,” lawyers would help people prepare legal documents. Also, he talked about allowing “a well-trained supervised lay person to speak in the courtroom” on behalf of indigent clients, and he talked about basic things like simple forms and written instructions. He also proposed ways to raise money, such as imposing a fee on out-of-state lawyers.

“It’s a marathon,” Wilkins said. “But I do think if we keep the pressure on, we will get somewhere. But it will take a long time.”

During a question-and-answer session, lawyer John W. Dineen submitted a question saying: “Tomorrow morning in Rhode Island, in state District Courts and municipal courts, hundreds of people will plead nolo [no contest] in criminal cases without any representation. Their criminal records will affect housing, employment and other vital areas.”

Dineen asked, does the term Civil Gideon imply that the state has already met the goals of providing criminal representation in criminal cases?

Kocoras said, “The essence of that question is the extent to which someone should have an attorney in a criminal case, whether a misdemeanor or a felony.” And he agreed “there are all kinds of collateral consequences to pleas of guilty,” including deportation.

At the end of the event, Chief U.S. District Judge Mary M. Lisi said Rhode Island has had a public defender’s office since 1941, and for at least 30 years lawyers have been provided to indigent parents in Family Court cases involving abuse, neglect or termination of parental rights. “We have an awful lot to be proud of here in Rhode Island in the provision of legal services,” she said.

The Access to Justice Symposia will continue Feb. 13 when a panel will discuss “the rights of victims and eyewitnesses to crime and how those rights relate to the rights of criminal defendants.”

efitzpat@projo.com