The Artistic License – Law section only makes sense if you assume the legal system functions perfectly as intended all the time. It's incredibly common for public defenders to be so overworked that they only have enough time with a client to advise them to take a plea deal regardless of if they're innocent or not. Regardless of whether or not he had a public defender not being able to hire a lawyer is unfortunately an incredibly realistic reason for someone to be convicted.
And the fact that Clyde was editorializing on the stand isn't unrealistic either. Yeah it's against the rules but people don't always follow the rules, and not every judge is good at their job. Judicial misconduct exists.
Frankly the least realistic thing about the legal stuff in this book is the fact that the perpetrators get punished in the end. Places like Camp Green Lake are a dime a dozen, and even when kids are straight up murdered through neglect people usually aren't even charged with anything. Just look up the Elan School or the Judge Rotenberg Center for a glimpse of how realistic this book is.
Regarding: "Writers Cannot Do Math: Too much time passes, relative to the number of generations stated, between the time of Kissin' Kate Barlow and the main characters." How do you figure? Stanley I was robbed by Kissin' Kate, who was roughly the same age as Trout Walker. Three generations later, protagonist Stanley IV is a teenager, while the Warden (Trout's granddaughter) is a middle-aged woman, on par with Stanley III. It lines up fine.
I'm putting this in discussion because I'm inexperienced and don't want to damage to article, but it needs to be more clear in the earlier alphabetical entries that Hector and Zero are the same person. I've read this book before, but it had been long enough that I had forgotten that, and I think that other people might also forget if they haven't read it since elementary or middle school.