June 1, 1983

Prominent lawyers, judges and scholars warn that the nation's system of justice is choking on its own complexity and costliness as swollen caseloads place ever-greater demands on it. Experts as diverse as Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Attorney General William French Smith, Griffin B. Bell, the Attorney General in the Carter Administration, and Derek Bok, the president of Harvard University and former dean of the Harvard Law School, argue that the country suffers from too many laws, too many lawsuits, too many legal entanglements and, at least in Mr. Bok's view, too many lawyers. While such complaints are not new, they are being voiced with increasing urgency by many pillars of the legal establishment as well as by outside critics. In his most recent of many complaints about the Supreme Court's swollen caseload, a May 17 speech to the American Law Institute, Chief Justice Burger declared that the nation was plagued ''with an almost irrational focus - virtually a mania - on litigation as a way to solve all problems.'' Mr. Bok, in his annual report to the Board of Overseers of Harvard College, said the United States had ''developed a legal system that is the most expensive in the world yet cannot manage to protect the rights of most of its citizens.''

The leading economic indicators rose 1.1 percent in April, their 10th consecutive monthly increase, the Commerce Department reported. The gain was seen as further evidence that recovery continues to gain momentum. Indeed, private and Government experts now believe the recovery will be stronger than the Administration had forecast. (Page D1.)

''The problem hasn't been monster storms, just a steady diet of regular ones.'' - Robert Dickson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. (D19:1.)

The Government's index of leading economic indicators rose 1.1 percent in April, the Commerce Department reported today. It was the 10th consecutive monthly increase and further evidence that the economic recovery continues to gain momentum. Nine of the eleven components of the index rose, led by an advance in the average workweek. The department also revised the increase for March to 2.2 percent, up from the 1.5 percent initially reported in April.

THE American passion for red, full-flavored meat is a distinctly halfhearted affair: though we are smitten with beef, we hardly give lamb a tumble by comparison. Yet by any reasonable standard, that shouldn't be the case. Lamb is just as red and twice as flavorful; on sale, it can be less expensive, and in the kitchen, there are dozens of dishes that can be made with it. On close scrutiny, in fact, our seemingly red-blooded predilection for nothing but hamburgers, steaks and prime ribs turns out to be frailty in disguise, rather like the fervor of those who profess a robust enthusiasm for the great outdoors, but who half the time find it too hot, too cold, too wet or just too much. Too much: ah, there's the rub - at least if you listen to the lambloathers among us. Stevedores and steeplejacks, tycoons of industry and titans of finance insist they can't stand the smell of it cooking. Otherwise competent heads of households have been known to whine when asked to carve a roasted leg. And in our entire history as a country, there has probably never been a church-supper planning group or a political dinner committee whose terror of lamb wasn't such that the idea of putting it on a menu was unthinkable.