Lawyer Regulation

Subscribe to Lawyer Regulation via RSS
Source: “Legal Innovation After Reform: Evidence from Regulatory Change,” Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession (Sept 2022) at 18, Figure 1.

In the long run, however, it’s all about the data.  Initial findings from Utah and Arizona reform efforts.

[Editor’s note:  For today’s feature post, we are pleased to welcome Lucy Ricca and Graham Ambrose, two of the authors of the recently published Stanford Law report on the legal regulatory changes taking place in Utah and Arizona. Prior to becoming Director of Policy and Programs at the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Lucy Ricca was the founding Executive Director of the Office of Legal Services Innovation (the regulatory office overseeing the Utah sandbox). In addition, she remains a member of the Office’s Executive Committee.  Graham Ambrose is currently a 2L at Stanford Law and a 2022-23 Civil Justice Fellow at the Rhode Center. wdh]

The year 2020, known to most for global pandemic shutdowns, also heralded leaps and bounds in legal regulatory reforms.  Utah and Arizona approved extraordinary changes to the regulation of legal practice. Both states loosened the bans on nonlawyer ownership of legal practices and the practice of law by nonlawyers.  Further, the Conference of Chief Justices issued a resolution urging states to consider regulatory innovations regarding the delivery of legal services, and the ABA approved a limited resolution encouraging consideration of regulatory innovation.  Even Justice Neil Gorsuch weighed in with his support for regulatory innovation.

This year, on the other hand, has been more challenging. 
Continue Reading The high highs and low lows of legal regulatory reform (333)

Some of the deepest thinkers on the topic think the answer is yes.

Innovation in the legal sector is primarily carrot driven—those who do it well enjoy greater commercial success.  But would the sector be better off if we went to the trouble of adding a stick (an ethical duty to innovate) to sanction those who fall too far behind?

I asked this question to three thought leaders who work at the forefront of the legal innovation space — Cat Moon, Ed Walters, and Bob Ambrogi — and somewhat surprisingly, all three say yes, offering rationales that are both passionate and persuasive.
Continue Reading Q: Is proposing an ethical duty for legal innovation worth the effort? (328)

Even in the US, the neat line between law firms and ALSP is starting to blur.  Nonetheless, the opportunities are only growing.

This post shares some of the most frequently asked questions I receive as a law firm consultant with expertise in ALSPs.  I am sharing this information because I believe that if more people understand how to leverage and/or mimic the most effective aspects of ALSPs, the adoption of ALSPs and new business models will accelerate.

What is an Alternative Legal Service Provider (ALSP)?

“ALSP” is an umbrella term used to describe a wide variety of businesses in the legal industry that are not law firms, but which provide legal or related support services. ALSPs usually leverage low-cost labor, technology, and efficient processes to perform certain types of work more quickly and less expensively than many law firms can perform it.
Continue Reading Your most common questions about ALSPs (307)

Upsolve uses First Amendment to deal a modest but important blow to UPL. Is it the basis for a playbook?  Time will tell.

Earlier this week, a federal district court in New York granted an injunction in favor of Upsolve, Inc., a nonprofit legal technology company founded by Rohan Pavuluri, a public interest entrepreneur who cut his teeth in Harvard Law’s A2J Lab, and Rev. John Udo-Okon,  a pastor from the South Bronx.  Both Pavuluri and Udo-Okon both were interested in providing free legal advice to individuals facing debt collection actions.  See Upsolve Inc. v. James, No. 22-cv-627 (SDNY, May 24, 2022).

The predicaments faced by many New Yorkers are fairly typical of those faced but so many individuals, whether indigent or low-income by typical measures, throughout the United States — they simply cannot afford lawyers to assist them with their pressing legal problems.  They are the faces of the profound access to justice crisis in the United States, putting them at omnipresent risk of losing their livelihoods, their homes, or even worse fates. Through a carefully designed initiative called the American Justice Movement, Upsolve and Rev. Udo-Okon would train a group of “justice advocates” to give targeted, limited legal advice to individuals facing debt collections.Continue Reading New and noteworthy: Upsolve Inc v. James (303)

A. Innovation methodologies are used to create novel experiments meant to improve DEI in legal, but more significantly, systems innovation creates an opportunity to advance DEI as a critical feature of the next epoch and not an afterthought.

I begin this post with a disclaimer: I’m a woman in law. I’m not racially diverse, or otherwise so. While I have an education and appreciation of the myriad DEI issues in the profession and broader society, I do not have a personal understanding beyond my own gendered experience. I speak only for myself from my place of understanding, with the best intentions towards empowering all people to flourish through equitable systems.

Q: “Wait, is this a Diversity initiative or an Innovation initiative?”

A: “It’s both.”
Continue Reading Q: How does innovation intersect with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in law? (298)

Improving the legal system requires state supreme courts to fully accept their role as regulators.

For the sake of this post, let’s assume the following statement is true:  Once every 100 years or so, the jurists who preside over the highest courts in the land are obligated to evaluate the functioning of the legal system and, if necessary, make structural changes that will improve access, efficiency, and justice for the citizens they serve.

Two interrelated challenges follow.  First, how do the jurists decide if structural changes are necessary?  Second, how do the jurists find the time and acquire the expertise to carry out such a large and complex project?
Continue Reading State supreme courts and the challenges of PeopleLaw (287)

To date, this highly influential stakeholder has had very little to say.

The fierce and fascinating struggle underway in the American states over legal services reform brings to the table a large collection of interest groups.  These groups include law firms, legal aid organizations, entrepreneurs who might benefit financially from the liberalization of entry rules, and of course the gatekeeper entities, including state bar authorities and the state supreme courts, whose decisions are crucial to the evolution and shape of reform.  See Posts 239 (beginning of a four-part series on serious challenges of bar federalism).

The identity of these specific groups may differ from state to state, as the legal ecosystem has contours often tailored to a particular state’s history and objectives, but the configuration of stakeholders has some rather common elements.

What remains somewhat opaque in this robust and interconnected battle over the reform of legal services is the voice of legal educators and the law schools.  These are, after all, the places in which future lawyers are educated and professional values are instilled.  It is had to imagine a more fertile and opportune time to discuss the ambitions and philosophies of this next generation of legal professionals.
Continue Reading Legal education as a key stakeholder in legal services reform (276)

Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

A prescription for a wicked problem.

Parts I ( 239), II (240), and III  (245) of this series have canvassed the matter of balkanized legal services regulation.  While not a comprehensive review of all dimensions of this large, complex system, I have drilled down to some of the examples of this phenomenon. And, in Part I and, especially, in Part III, I describe some of the regulatory pathologies that emerge from a system that is configured in such a balkanized way, pathologies that are problematic from a consumer welfare perspective but are deeply entrenched.
Continue Reading Our Bar Federalism, Part IV (246)