We have an ‘access to justice crisis’ in the U.S. and Canada that is fueled by a yawning ‘legal services gap’. While our legal systems provide “cadillac justice” for the wealthy and corporations able to afford and retain lawyers,[1] a substantial majority of American and Canadian citizens cannot afford to hire a lawyer and cannot obtain legal assistance. Their unmet legal needs mean that these individuals must navigate complex legal systems alone, without legal advice or assistance. Often with serious consequences.
Tramadol Online Overnight Ensuring access to justice is a serious challenge to the rule of law in Canada and the U.S. (as well as much of the western world), and the problem is significant and sustained. As noted by former and current justices of the Supreme Court of Canada and the United States, “many of society’s legal needs are going unmet”,[2] and “do not make the mistake of thinking this is only a problem in the courts”.[3] The entire legal system – both inside and outside the courtroom – “falls far short of providing access to the knowledge, resources and services that people need to deal effectively with legal matters”.[4]
Ordinary citizens and small businesses cannot obtain affordable legal services generally in respect to their legal needs, and when a matter moves into a litigation context involving a trier-of-fact (whether a judge, jury, administrative law judge, adjudicator, or arbitrator), they “find themselves shut out of court or forced to go it alone without a lawyer”.[5]
https://www.lcclub.co.uk/vz96cbgqfd7 Access to justice, the justice gap, or equal justice, all describe the same problem. In the U.S. [and Canada], the majority of our citizens cannot get legal help, whether that is for criminal charges, civil matters, or their small-business issues.
– Mary E. Juetten, ABA Journal[6]
http://countocram.com/2024/03/07/ryjpuvw3du The current market for legal services is inaccessible to over 70% of our citizens in the U.S. and Canada – including small business owners – due in no small measure to the financial cost of legal advice, services, and representation.[7] Unmet legal needs – due to the lack of access to affordable legal services – is bad for society, citizens, businesses, the economy, and the rule of law. The legal system generally – and its courts and administrative tribunals specifically – belong to the people, and the people should be able to access them. The most advanced legal systems in the democratic world are a failure if they do not – or cannot – provide affordable and accessible legal services and justice to the people they are meant to serve.[8]
Tramadol Order Uk And to add insult to injury, while at the same time that our society is providing “wonderful justice for corporations and for the wealthy”,[9] the middle- and working-class “confront a legal system for which they are the ‘financial underwriters’ and are expected to support through their tax dollars yet which they themselves experience major financial problems in accessing”, if they can access at all.[10]
https://www.worldhumorawards.org/uncategorized/n5ub5gd2r5 The legal profession is unique in that it both regulates itself and holds an absolute monopoly on the provision of legal services. … Perhaps the most significant impact of the lawyer’s monopoly is the tremendous negative effect it has on access to civil justice for ordinary [citizens]. … The civil access to justice crisis cannot be overemphasized and cuts across almost every dimension of the population, including low-income families, middle-income individuals, and small businesses.
– Fordham Law Review, 2021[11]
https://wasmorg.com/2024/03/07/u8gcnchnub While there are a number of complex systemic problems contributing to the issue, the legal marketplace and the current traditional “lawyer-only” or “lawyer-centric” legal services delivery model (read traditional law firms) is not aligned with the interests of the public or its legal consumers.[12] There is a growing consensus among critics (including legal scholars, the judiciary, legal leaders, and legal commentators) that the ‘access to justice crisis’ is exacerbated, if not substantially caused, by the restrictive lawyer-centric regulations promoting the legal profession’s monopoly, and barring or restricting the delivery of affordable legal services to the public by alternative nonlawyer legal service providers such as licensed paralegals and providers of legal technology.
https://ncmm.org/7qp5qjdbr3r As such, there is a significant ‘legal services gap’ contributing to the ‘access to justice crisis’ that must be addressed and reformed. Where do we start?
The roadmap for addressing the ‘access to justice crisis’ will require both innovation goals and institutional and structural goals. And the good news is that technology, allied nonlawyer professionals (i.e. licensed paralegals or other paraprofessionals such as notaries), [13] and other solutions show incredible promise – and indeed outright successful results – in addressing unmet legal needs:[14]
American Express Tramadol “[P]rominent voices in regulatory reform, argue that ‘our existing approaches to regulating the … legal profession increase costs, decrease access, stifle innovation, and do little to protect the interests of those who need or use legal services’. … The result is a monopoly [for lawyers and the legal profession] that drives up prices, reduces competition, and creates a one-size-fits-all approach to serving the public’s legal needs.
Deregulation proponents have pushed to lift restrictions on the unauthorized practice of law [regulations] so that a tiered system of legal professionals might emerge—much the way the medical field is comprised of doctors [i.e. lawyers], nurses [i.e. paralegals], and technicians [i.e. legal technology platforms], each of whom perform a distinct and important role in the delivery of health services.
[A]s scholars have pointed out, lawyers are not currently providing services to most of the … population. Therefore, the salient question is not whether a nonlawyer alternative provider of legal services is as good as a lawyer but rather, whether that alternative provider is better than nothing.”
https://www.jamesramsden.com/2024/03/07/n03izy8a5f Broadening accessibility to legal information, advice and representation should be the number one priority for every governing body of the legal profession in Canada.
– Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada[15]
https://www.goedkoopvliegen.nl/uncategorized/j8ry8bujy However, these type of systemic solutions have and continue to generate resistance from practicing lawyers, lawyer trade groups, bar associations, and regulators across much of the U.S. and Canada. In this atmosphere it is more important than ever that the self-regulated legal profession act in the public’s interest, evaluating and approving new and/or improved ideas – in respect to the affordable delivery of legal services to the public by alternative legal service providers – on their merits. The focus must be on the needs and protection of the public, not the protection and preservation of the legal profession’s monopoly on the delivery of legal services.
https://giannifava.org/yekm7rphamk Self-regulation of the legal profession has strong historical and protectionist roots that are no longer consistent with the 21st Century, modern legal services, or the needs of the public consumers of legal services in North America. The focus must be on the requirements and needs of the public, who are entitled to not only access to affordable legal services, but fair access to our systems of justice.
https://elisabethbell.com/vdmb18tt34t So what’s the solution? [Some of the legal profession’s Regulators are] trying to figure that out by exploring proposals to offer low-cost, quality legal assistance, including licensing paraprofessionals [think of them as the legal equivalent of nurse practitioners] and creating online options [new tech platforms that could help people resolve basic legal issues on their own]. But these exciting ideas threaten the status quo and face stiff political winds from attorneys who oppose competition from new legal services.
– Editorial Board, ‘Lawyers are fighting innovative proposals for more affordable legal assistance. That’s wrong’, Los Angeles Times[16]
https://fotballsonen.com/2024/03/07/wz0ufj897 Introduction, Background, and Big Picture
https://tankinz.com/835q9uns At the heart of our legal system – and “access to justice” – is “meaningful access to legal information, advice and representation”.[17] However, the legal system and requisite legal services in Canada and the United States are simply not accessible to a substantial majority of our citizens. And it has steadily deteriorated.
https://www.jamesramsden.com/2024/03/07/b9it3ck Why, because the legal system is unduly complex (both with respect to the law and the processes by which it is applied), and does not operate efficiently or cost-effectively for the public consumers of legal services. Most damning, despite the fact that there is no shortage of lawyers or traditional law firms, legal fees are simply too expensive for the middle- and working-class. And in light of the legal profession’s regulated monopoly in the provision of legal services to the public, there is little competition or incentive to change this fact. The “statistics support” this hard “view that accessing the justice system with the help of a legal professional is” simply and “increasingly unaffordable to most people”[18]:[19]
“The regulatory structure of the profession exacts a significant human toll and plays a role in perpetuating economic hardship and racial injustice. … The reality of the monopoly is that it contributes to a mismatch between people’s legal needs and their ability to access services. … We must look to the civil legal needs of the public at large when considering the critical need to increase access to quality and affordable legal assistance.”
https://giannifava.org/r9mnogjf1 As such, the legal system and marketplace in North America is not appropriately aligned to the interests of the public. In short, something has gone critically wrong. It appears that many of our legal, regulatory, political, and judicial leaders “have forgotten what and who the law is for, and the higher ends it should strive to attain”.[20] Most importantly in this equation, the self-regulated legal profession are not meeting the basic legal needs and expectations of the public, and the discontent runs deep.
https://worthcompare.com/dsrm0uk Most lawyers are too expensive for most Canadians [and Americans] to afford. This is partially a result of the statutory monopoly that lawyers have on most forms of legal representation in Ontario and across the country [and the United States].
– Globe and Mail[21]
https://www.lcclub.co.uk/9j33uzun9w So what is the answer to this unacceptable situation? In this period of unprecedented legal need, one important “part of the answer” is that access to legal services can no longer be synonymous with access to a lawyer.[22] The status quo is not working – and there is a need for foundational reforms and a culture shift within the legal profession in order to improve the public’s access to legal services and the legal system. A full spectrum of approaches – which must include regulated but nonlawyer legal pathways – is required to mitigate this crisis, and the solution needs to come from innovations in the way that legal services are delivered to the public.[23]
https://asperformance.com/uncategorized/mwhf9rl Looked at in this light, comprehensive – public facing – legal technology and regulated paralegals or paraprofessionals (think “nurse practioners”) can be positive disrupting agents of innovation[24] that can be expected to drive cost-effective legal services and access to the legal system for the public in both the U.S. and Canada:[25]
https://tankinz.com/b0hrbmo “With these broad concerns in mind, the starting point … is … that the problem of inadequate access to legal services is not fundamentally one of poverty, insufficient commitment by lawyers to pro bono work or insufficient government funding. … [A]t its root, the problem is one of regulation. Indeed, … regulatory bodies must reconsider their regulatory work and the goals driving it. In particular, this transformation will require making access to legal services one of the key goals and priorities of regulation and a driver of regulatory change. The regulators may well need legislative change to pursue this agenda. However, the expansion of legal services for the public should be a primary objective and a central outcome of legal services regulatory reform. …
One potentially innovative approach involves moving away from a regulatory model that focuses on the prevention of the unauthorized practice of law to one that has as one of its goals the promotion of access to legal services. …
https://ncmm.org/ifikwtpc As is well-known, the regulatory structures that govern the practice of law generally limit the delivery of legal services to licensed professionals. While non-lawyers can provide legal information, only lawyers are traditionally permitted to provide legal advice. While this rule is designed to protect the public against unqualified persons purporting to give legal advice, it also contributes to broadening the legal services gap. It lessens competition in the legal marketplace, making it difficult for non-lawyers (such as paralegals or independent non-lawyer service providers [such as legal technology and new tech platforms]) to provide some legal services that are arguably within their competence at a lower cost, except in some highly regulated settings. …
https://www.worldhumorawards.org/uncategorized/js4uhbw7j3x These considerations give rise to the question of whether allowing nonlawyers to provide legal services would enhance access to justice. …
https://musiciselementary.com/2024/03/07/rzuvho6 There appears to be no serious dispute that the traditional unauthorized practice of law prohibitions contribute to the access to legal services gap and there are many ideas on how to reduce that effect without endangering the public.”
In this respect, similar to the UK experience to protect the public from a protectionist legal profession, legal commentators and academics have argued for reregulation – and even deregulation – of the legal profession.[26] These type of reforms include a consideration of “entity regulation” (i.e. entities providing legal services) and “role regulation” (i.e. paralegals/paraprofessionals providing legal services), whether individually or utilized in parallel, and even the consideration of appointing a new separate independent regulatory body of legal service providers (thereby ending self-regulation by the legal profession).[27]However, across the board, it is recommended that reform directed at paralegals and paraprofessionals include a licensure process that encompasses a competence-based system for licensing, and that specifically includes a competence framework identifying the knowledge, skills and other attributes necessary to perform the essential duties expected of such paralegals (and the threshold levels at which these competencies should be performed at the point of licensure).
https://fotballsonen.com/2024/03/07/gzi5hdo It’s been more than 20 years since Ontario’s law society, at the direction of the provincial government, reluctantly agreed to license and regulate independent paralegals. Yet paralegals’ scope of practice has been so constrained as to make them effectively irrelevant to the larger legal marketplace. Family law lawyers in Ontario seem determined to ensure the same thing happens with the proposed family law services providers in that province.
– Jordan Furlong[28]
Across the United States and Canada – with narrow limited exceptions in some provincial or state jurisdictions – nonlawyers are generally prohibited from representing clients’ interests in court or providing legal advice (outside of minor designated areas of law). The general approach is founded on a common “lawyer-centric” restriction on who may provide legal services to the public, but also involves within some provincial or state jurisdictions a variety of piecemeal extensions and exemptions that provide limited opportunities for paralegals and other nonlawyers to provide some legal services to the public in specified circumstances.[29]
The province of Ontario for example, Canada’s largest province, is a little ahead of the game as it “recognizes and licenses two types of legal professionals: lawyers and paralegals. Given the status of paralegals, Ontario’s approach is not as lawyer-centric as most other Canadian” and U.S. “jurisdictions, however – unfortunately – it is still lawyer-oriented in the sense that lawyers retain a significant area of generally restricted practice from which paralegals are” limited or “excluded” and may not provide legal services to the public (i.e. family law for example). As such, the licensed “paralegals’ scope of practice has been so constrained by the self-regulated legal profession as to make them effectively irrelevant to the larger legal marketplace”. [30]
Despite these restrictions, and outside the issue of specific regulatory reform, it should be noted that there is a distinction between “legal advice / legal services” and “legal information”. This distinction is particularly important for legal technology and public facing tech platforms (as digital literacy in society moves from a functional proposition to a mindset):[31]
“[A]cross Canada the provision of legal information is not regarded as the practice of law or the provision of legal services. Along the spectrum of law-related assistance … this creates what is often referred to as a regulatory ‘dividing line’ between ‘legal information’ (on the largely unregulated side of the line) and ‘legal advice’ or, more broadly, ‘legal services’ (on the regulated side).
Generally speaking, a dividing line may be theoretically drawn by reference to a point at which law-related assistance requires the application of legal knowledge, principles, and judgment to specific circumstances. As such, the dividing line is both blurry and potentially widely encompassing. …
US jurisdictions have … been wrestling with whether and how to apply unauthorized practice of law concepts and rules to technology-enabled providers of legal document assembly tools and other law-related tools that could be characterized as legal services [or legal information provided directly to the public].”
As noted by Professor Lauren Sudeall in a recent Yale Law Journal article, lawyers may currently “have a monopoly on traditional legal services”, but they “do not—and should not—have a monopoly over the law itself or legal information that is in the public sphere. Thus, providing information on what the law is, or when it applies generally, should never be prohibited”. Going further, “efforts to simplify legal information and provide explanations about when it might apply” to the public “should not be prohibited either—they should perhaps even be required” in the circumstances:[32]
“It makes sense as a matter of policy to ensure that litigants are not disadvantaged by nonlawyers providing advice about how the law applies to their specific cases. But the solution to that problem cannot be to ensure that litigants are afforded no guidance at all. Withholding information about when and how litigants can use the law and court processes to assert claims and defend themselves against the claims of others violates principles of fundamental fairness and impermissibly frustrates access to justice for all.”
Although non-lawyers cannot deliver legal services, it is well settled that they can provide legal information. The line between legal information and legal services is notoriously murky. … The fact that there is little to no guidance for developers of A2J [access to justice] apps in Canada on how to navigate the boundaries between legal information and legal services in order to avoid engaging in UPL [unauthorized practice of law] may be a barrier to innovation. … Multiple law societies … expressed worry with respect to certain types of legal apps operating without regulatory oversight.
– ‘Emerging Technological Solutions to Access to Justice Problems: Opportunities and Risks of Mobile and Web-based Apps’[33]
This leads us to the discussion of public facing legal technology, and the ability of nonlawyer service providers and companies like LegalZoom to provide legal services to the public.
The vast majority of Canadian and US jurisdictions, with the exception of some jurisdictions such as Washington in the District of Columbia, prohibit nonlawyers from not only owning or investing in law firms,[34] but also from providing legal services to the public through legal technology companies.[35] The boundaries between the law and technological legal services are blurred, and legal technology for the public – a rapidly developing field – has only begun to tap into its potential to address the public’s lack of access to affordable legal services and the overall access to justice crisis:[36]
LegalZoom (LZ) provides ‘just resolutions’ to millions of individuals and SME’s and enjoys a net promoter score (NPS) significantly higher than white shoe corporate firms. The company has replaced the binary lawyer engagement process–retain counsel, or go without representation– with a range of options. Different degrees of “lawyer touch” are offered. They include self-serve documents (created and updated by licensed attorneys), subscriptions for phone and/or electronic consultations with attorneys, and access to a referral network that may lead to attorney-client engagements. Lawyers no longer dictate the terms of engagement; clients have choice, price predictability, and easy access to legal services that do not necessarily involve full-blown lawyer engagement.
A proliferation of legal products – once delivered by lawyers as ‘bespoke’ services – are now available online. Lawyers are involved in their development, but customers no longer must engage counsel on an individualized basis for solutions to common problems. Process and automation are expanding access, reducing cost, and leveraging legal expertise. Hello Divorce, a California-based law company designed to reduce the cost and anxiety of divorce, is another “lawyer-lite” provider. The company provides self-help documents and access to attorneys online or by phone. The service is faster, more cost-effective, and predictable than retaining an attorney in ‘routine’ divorces. LegalZoom, Hello Divorce, and a growing number of legal providers like them provide ‘just resolutions’ that may or may not directly involve lawyers.”
A broad interpretation of [the legal profession’s] ‘unauthorized practice statutes’ is increasingly intellectually indefensible, especially because of a concern that the impetus to exclude others is motivated by a desire to give lawyers a competitive advantage.
– Professor Judith McMorrow, Boston College Law School[37]
Fulfilling the public’s expectations of reasonable access to the legal system and legal representation and/or advice – in a phrase, providing ‘access to justice’ that is lacking from the legal profession – is vital, and legal leaders and lawyers and the Courts stand at a tipping point. The legal system – and access to legal services and justice – is in crisis and the role these nonlawyer actors play within it is changing rapidly. The symptoms of this crisis are evident in both the social and economic spheres. Income inequality and inability to afford legal fees has grown to an extent not seen since the Great Depression.
The way the self-regulated legal profession practices law today may be fairly seen as exploitive, and has created a vicious cycle. But, as noted, others – including governments and courts – also bear some of the responsibility. Governments have failed to adequately fund the courts in respect to modernization, and most have done little to rein in the legal profession’s regulators when they have failed to act in the public’s interest. Courts and their proceedings are unnecessarily complicated, backlogged, opaque, overly committed to tradition and pageantry, and widely regarded as forums more welcoming to corporations and the wealthy than those members of the public unable to afford the services of a lawyer.[38]
The sad truth is that around the world, the legal profession (and in many cases the courts together) are often not fulfilling the expectations – let alone the basic legal needs – of the majority of the public consumers of legal services. Legal systems everywhere are experiencing an access to justice crisis that cries out for innovative affordable solutions.
Although regulators of the legal profession in the U.S. and Canada[39] are charged with the duty to vigorously advance the “public interest” – as opposed to pursuing “self-interested regulatory decisions” – a growing segment of the population blames the legal profession and its regulators both for contributing to the crisis, and for failing to act in the public interest to comprehensively address and correct the underlying issue of access to affordable legal services. Unfortunately, there is an appearance of protectionism, preservation and maintenance of the traditional ‘lawyer-centric’ monopoly and legal services delivery model. And in this light, regulators in the U.S. and Canada may be perceived by the public as both cheerleader and prefect, failing to appropriately tackle the profession’s troubles in areas that may be seen to be in conflict with “protectionist instincts”:[40]
- While the advantages of self-regulation are generally understood by governments and the professions (professionalism, ethical standards, independence of the bar, rule of law), the downside of this form of regulation is less understood and often complicated by the nature of the interests at play. The downside of delegating broad regulatory powers to the legal profession is that such delegation may not always produce regulation that serves public interest objectives, but rather may represent the immediate interests of its lawyer members at the expense of, or instead of, the broader interests of society and the public.[41]
- However, this does not always take place due to a number of factors, including: (a) the appearance of inherent conflict in self-regulation (which may be mostly ignored, not recognized or misunderstood);[42] (b) a “fundamentally conservative mission” – preserve and maintain – and; (c) a ratification process ill-suited to innovation and reform (i.e. regulators in Canada and the U.S.[43] are controlled by lawyers or former lawyers who, by training and disposition, tend to resist change).[44] In addition, one may become inured to the “characteristics” of the profession, or absorbed into the prevailing environment of self-justification and reasoning (i.e. “it is just the way things get done here – its cultural”).
- Regulators who treat their roles as defenders of the profession feed the erosion of public confidence in self-regulation.[45]
- Taken all together there appears to be an implicit challenge to reforming an industry that regulates itself, and – according to one legal commentator – where those regulators are or were senior lawyers who have benefited or are benefitting from the system being inefficient[46] and protectionist.[47]
- In addition, particularly in Canada, is that “protectionist pressures on law societies exist both in election campaigning and by fact that the majority of law society governors are market incumbents”[48] – despite the fact that the Law Society’s “role is to protect the public, not the vested interests of some of its members”.[49] The views of lawyers that the Law Society oversees is “likely an important consideration in any prospective policy change to legal regulation”.[50]
- Malcom Mercer, a Bencher of the Law Society of Ontario, and former Chair of the Law Society’s Professional Regulation Committee, has noted that self-regulation can be “lost all at once or bit by bit”.[51]
Taken all together there appears to be an implicit challenge to reforming an industry that regulates itself, and – according to one legal commentator – where those regulators are or were senior lawyers who have benefited or are benefitting from the system being inefficient and protectionist.
– Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017[52]
The legal profession – ponderous, backward looking, and self-preserving[53] – needs to be saved from itself, if not for the public it is supposed to serve. A future of claimed self-regulation by the legal profession, without the input of creative nonlawyers, will be no self-regulation at all.
The systemic problems we are facing as a society require systemic solutions, and the legal professions regulators – if not the government itself – must provide them to protect the public, and preserve our legal institutions and rule of law. The legal profession’s “choice is whether to be engaged in the process of change” in the public interest, “or to have change imposed by forces of competition, government, culture, and economics”.[54]
It is unlikely that the legal profession will find solutions without visionary leaders – which must include nonlawyers – willing to challenge the bar’s rigid norms and conceive a new or modified model that will actually serve the public and our society.
To explore this new vision of the role of the legal profession in society, and to understand what it means for tomorrow’s lawyers and legal leaders, we need to understand that the systemic problems within the legal profession require systemic solutions.
This is a central lesson of legal history. ‘Lawyers, as a group, have never been the leaders of social movements … They are followers. If a movement becomes well established, they might pay attention. But they don’t set out to be more open’.
– ‘The Untold History of the Legal Profession’, Precedent[55]
https://www.worldhumorawards.org/uncategorized/uqt3znrvjkv Unauthorized Practice of Law (UPL): implications of the Legal Profession’s monopoly on legal Services
Worldwide, regulation of the law occurs amid a cluster of often archaic rules and norms. Services are controlled in most markets around two categories: the practice of law and ownership of law firms. The practice of law can be generally defined to include advice, transactional work, and court representation.
Despite the systematic inability of the self-regulated legal profession in North America to fulfill the legal needs of the whole community, “unauthorized practice of law” (UPL) prohibitions restrict options for legal assistance for the public from nonlawyers. UPL rules purport to protect consumers by maintaining the integrity and competence of people who render legal services, however, in the name of protecting consumers of legal services, these regulations have the effect of creating a monopoly for the legal profession.[56] At this point, it is arguable that “there is no truly independent regulatory organization regulating legal services” in the U.S. or Canada as lawyers as members of the bar are actually participating in the Regulating body that “executes the function of self-regulation”:[57]
“A regulatory organization ideally seeks to further the interests of the public. Its regulatory goals are to minimize harms and maximize benefits for the public. A regulatory organization seeks to ensure that the public is not significantly harmed and that it may enjoy increased benefits from the consumption of goods or services. It need not set any requirements for specific legal roles or impose any ethical conduct codes. Its mission is to ascertain, using objective empirical data, that the public interest is supported. …
Although the interests of the public and of lawyers are not always automatically in conflict, they do frequently lead in different and sometimes conflicting directions. For example, the interest of the [self-regulated legal profession] in maintaining high walls around the profession and high barriers to entry may diverge from the interest of the public in having a range of legal services and solutions from a variety of providers at a range of prices. When the [self-regulated legal profession] conflates the interests of its members with the interests of the public and/or elevates the interests of its members over that of the public, the authority of the regulatory delegation is undermined and should be reconsidered.”
The legal profession in the UK lost the right of self-regulation for a number of reasons, but one of the main reasons was that their self-regulatory bodies were seen to be anti-competitive – they acted like monopolists.[58]
We lawyers enjoy a rare privilege. We are largely left to regulate our own market, often through rules of our own creation and sometimes through statutes effectively of our own devise. … But you might … wonder if a profession entrusted with the privilege of self-regulation is at least as (or maybe more) susceptible than other lines of commerce to regulations that impose too many social costs compared to their attendant benefits.
– Justice Neil Gorsuch[59]
The self-regulated legal profession in the U.S. and Canada justify their monopoly on the basis of “protecting” the public from the “unauthorized practice of law” by unqualified and incompetent practitioners.[60] Lawyers have historically been resistant and even threatened by innovation and competition. Part of this is the economic self-interest one sees in any existing industry—the organized bar is not anxious to foster comprehensive or systemic change that would create new competition or reduce profit. In addition, lawyers practice in a literally storied profession that emphasizes the independence of the lawyer, ethics, and the status of the occupation as a profession rather than a business. This cultural tradition includes scepticism of innovation in the provision of legal services or of anything that might challenge the norms of legal professionalism. This tradition – and the Rules of Professional Conduct – have unfortunately been used to justify opposition to any perceived threat to lawyer “independence”; and it has been used to justify a variety of restrictions on who can practice law and how they can do so.[61] Law Professor Adam Dodek and Justice of Canada lawyer Emily Alderson interestingly addressed the “public interest” debate in a published law journal article as follows:[62]
“[T]he idea of ‘public interest’ is multifaceted and provides little practical guidance for regulators. There is no agreement on how to protect the public, nor what the public needs protection from. Indeed, there is not even consensus that regulation is needed to meet the public interest: Milton Friedman believed that exposing the profession to the full force of the market would be the most effective way to protect consumers. More recently, American author Benjamin Barton argued for deregulation of legal work done outside courts, saying it is unnecessary for consumer protection. Approaching the issue from a different perspective, Harry Arthurs believes lawyers’ conduct is not strongly affected by regulation anyway.
Others believe that while regulation can protect the public interest, current regimes are falling short of that goal. Deborah Rhode recommends that regulation be reformed to provide ‘less [protection] for attorneys and more for consumers’. In 1992, David Wilkins noted the conflict of regulation theories and the lack of connection to enforcement regimes for American lawyers. In 2001, in writing about regulating legal competence in Canada, Trebilcock argued that law societies should shift their emphasis from regulating ‘inputs’ to focus more on ‘outputs’. He argued for ‘a more targeted, bottom-line, output-oriented regulatory focus, because that is what a consumer welfare perspective demands’. The same year, Barton asserted that a disconnect existed between the public interest objective and the reality of regulation in the American legal profession. We believe a similar disconnect between goals and outcomes exists today in Canada.
We acknowledge that the concept of public interest is contested.”
As such, it is not surprising that everyone who argues about affordable alternative legal services delivery models and ABSs – for or against it – frames those arguments in terms of the public interest. However, the fact remains that the people most likely to be affected by the adoption of these reforms are lawyers and the legal profession.[63] Viewed in this light, while the “unauthorized practice of law” rules are laudatory in theory (where such “protection” is dressed up in the clothing of ethics rhetoric), in practice the real issue is law firm economics and the legal profession reacting to protect itself from competition and actual or threatened loss of business: [64]
“The frequent penalty flags thrown at retail upstarts like LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer, and AVVO are not so much about protecting the public from unscrupulous, illegitimate providers as they are about protecting lawyers from competition, thereby maintaining traditional legal culture and its monopoly. No wonder so many people hate lawyers.”
[American Professors] Benjamin H. Barton and Stephanos Bibas offer both historic perspective and startling data regarding the obstacles faced by [legal consumers] … painstakingly document[ing] how this clearly self-interested legal doctrine has been abused by courts in an unholy alliance with bar associations to shield lawyers from competition at the expense of the public.
– Jonathan Knee, New York Times[65]
Although “unauthorized practice of law” rules were originally designed to be used to protect the public interest, they are unfortunately utilized (or threatened to be utilized) in many cases to protect lawyers from competition[66] – and as noted by one legal commentator, “since so many of the innovations that have had the effect of actually improving things have come from nonlawyers (such as paralegals and developers of legal technology), the legal establishment’s continued protection of the status quo — all justified under the spurious guise of “consumer protection” — is all the more indefensible”.[67]
The public has a legitimate interest in seeing that [self-regulated professions] are bound by rules ensuring that (i) they operate primarily in service of the public interest, and (ii) they are subject to a high level of public accountability.
– C.D. Howe Institute, Who Watches the Watchmen? The Role of the Self-Regulator[68]
Several different rationales have been put forward in defense of unauthorized practice of law (UPL) rules over the years, but the one that has obtained the most traction is that the UPL rules protect of the public in respect to integrity and competence[69] – that is, they are asserted to protect consumers from unqualified and incompetent practitioners.[70] Although UPL rules are promulgated in the interest of protecting the public, legal academics and commentators and some judges have expressed skepticism at this purported justification – noting that they rest on faulty or untested assumptions:[71]
“Critics of UPL point out that these justifications rest on faulty or untested assumptions, such as that a lawyer is always more competent than a non-lawyer for a given task, or that in a free market consumers will choose incompetent non-lawyers. For example, some argue that consumers of legal services look toward indicia of reliability other than licensing when determining the competence of a provider, and that broad consumer protection statutes are more effective at protecting consumers from incompetent and fraudulent providers than are UPL statutes. Most importantly, empirical evidence demonstrates that non-lawyers can be just as effective as lawyers at resolving certain legal issues. In fact, some studies have suggested that a non-lawyer who is familiar with a given forum or area of law may make a better advocate than a lawyer with more general legal knowledge.”
All around the world jurisdictions are reconsidering and ultimately abandoning self-regulation as a model for the governance of the legal profession. Whether it be Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, England and Wales, South Africa or Ireland a wide range of advanced liberal democratic societies have assessed self-regulation and found it wanting as a defensible regime.
– Richard Devlin and Porter Heffernan, The End(s) of Self-Regulation[72]
It is entirely reasonable for lawyers and nonlawyers to co-exist in the legal market. As noted by several legal authorities:
- “Consistent with the law of supply and demand, increasing the supply of legal services can be expected to lower prices, drive efficiency, and improve consumer satisfaction. And, in fact, studies suggest that lay specialists who provide representation in bankruptcy and administrative proceedings often perform as well as or even better than attorneys and generate greater consumer satisfaction. The American Law Institute has noted, too, that ‘experience in several states with extensive nonlawyer provision of traditional legal services indicates no significant risk of harm to consumers’. And the Federal Trade Commission has observed that it is ‘not aware of any evidence of consumer harm arising from [the provision of legal services by nonlawyers] that would justify foreclosing competition’. In the United Kingdom, where nonlawyers can win government contracts to provide legal advice and appear before some administrative tribunals, nonlawyers significantly outperform lawyers in terms of results and satisfaction when dealing with low-income clients. Indeed, studies there show that the best predictor of quality appears to be ‘specialization, not professional status’.[73] – cited by Justice Neil Gorsuch in Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, 2016.
- “Neither will regulatory reform or the [Licensed Paralegal Practitioner] program lead to second-class representation for clients. First, it is important to note that even if these reform efforts would result in second-rate representation for some, that may be better than the current state of affairs, which is no representation at all. Second [as noted in the point above], evidence indicates that there are legal tasks that nonlawyers can do as well as—if not better than—lawyers. For example, a study comparing the legal work of solicitors and nonlawyers in the United Kingdom found that lawyers and nonlawyers were equally likely to do competent legal work and that nonlawyers were 600% more likely to do legal work that peer reviewers rated as excellent quality. In another U.K. study, specialist will-writers, who had no law degree, were more likely to draft a high-quality simple will than solicitors were”. – cited by Justice Deno Mimonas in Democratizing the Rule of Law, 2020.[74]
- The fact that there is “little to no guidance for developers of A2J apps in Canada on how to navigate the boundaries between legal information and legal services in order to avoid engaging in UPL may be a barrier to innovation. The Canadian law societies surveyed … indicated that they have not received any complaints in relation to legal apps. Multiple law societies, however, expressed worry with respect to certain types of legal apps operating without regulatory oversight”.[75] In the “United States, regulatory responses to technological innovations in the delivery of legal services initially sought to defend the status quo. … More recently, however, there has been” some “evidence of increased willingness by regulators to accommodate new approaches”. The “American Bar Association has called for further study of entities engaging in innovative models of legal service delivery [to] the public” – “no similar consideration of the appropriate regulation of legal apps has yet been undertaken in Canada”. – Professors Jena McGill, Amy Salyzyn, and Suzanne Bouclin in Emerging Technological Solutions to Access to Justice Problems and Mobile and Web-based Legal Apps: Opportunities, Risks and Information Gaps[76]
There appears to be no serious dispute that the traditional unauthorized practice of law prohibitions contribute to the access to legal services gap …. Regulatory bodies should closely examine the restrictions on non-lawyers and critically assess whether the present rules prevent forms of service delivery that are in the public interest …. Access to legal services is not being given the priority that it ought to have as a legal profession regulatory issue. The legal services gap is a major element of our serious and urgent problem of access to justice.
– Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada[77]
The argument in favor of UPL rules “assumes that clients cannot be trusted to choose for themselves whether they want to pay for the extra protection of a [lawyer] generalist instead of the narrower protection of a non-lawyer specialist.” In addition, it fails to address the point that even “clients who are aware of the limitations on the abilities and ethics of non-lawyers might rationally want to hire them despite their shortcomings because, in a free competitive market for legal services, those shortcomings will bring lower prices” – the cost of a lawyer’s services being a common factor cited for not seeking a lawyer’s services.[78]
In short: “the public may not desire the ‘protection’ that the bar and the Courts have instituted on their behalf”.[79] In this vein, Professor Rhode has remarked that if enforcement of UPL rules are in the public’s interest “the public has remained curiously unsupportive of the war effort”,[80] while Justice McLachlin has noted that protectionist “assumptions” should not be permitted to prevail unchallenged, asking why legal consumers should “be forced to go to expensive lawyers working in expensive office buildings located in expensive urban centres”.[81]
The regulatory structure of the profession exacts a significant human toll and plays a role in perpetuating economic hardship and racial injustice. … The reality of the monopoly is that it contributes to a mismatch between people’s legal needs and their ability to access services. … We must look to the civil legal needs of the public at large when considering the critical need to increase access to quality and affordable legal assistance.
– Fordham Law Review, 2021[82]
While the regulatory framework may have originally served the wider public – it is no longer tenable to simply continue to rely on this framework which is no longer appropriately aligned with the public it was established to protect.[83] Having said that, “of course, the potential for abuse cannot be disregarded. Many thoughtful commentators suggest that UPL restrictions are necessary to protect the public from fraudulent or unqualified practitioners”. But does this valid concern justify the absolute or highly restrictive UPL bans and limitations found in jurisdictions across Canada and the U.S. today? On balance, that is a case that can no longer be met as a majority of the public can no longer access legal services at all, particularly in light of the increasing amount of evidence suggesting that “a more nuanced approach might adequately preserve (or even enhance) quality while simultaneously increasing access to competent and affordable legal services”.[84]
Self-regulation of the legal profession has strong historical and protectionist roots that are no longer consistent with the 21st Century, modern legal services, or the desperate need of society and the public for affordable access to alternative legal services in North America. The antiquated rules prescribing who can deliver legal services (lawyers) and the acceptable business structures (the lawyer partnership ‘ownership and control’ model) were put in place in a different era, at a different time and under different circumstances.[85]
Unauthorized Practice of Law rules are designed to protect the public interest, not protect lawyers from competition.
– Mary Jutten, Technology and the Unauthorized Practice of Law[86]
https://giannifava.org/u62pnce3w Law’s Financial Success comes at steep price for the Public
The legal profession has been remarkably buoyant during these tumultuous times. It has weathered the 2008 global financial crisis, economic downturns, digital transformation, domestic and international instability, and the 2020 pandemic. Throughout the last two decades, traditional law firms and the overall legal sector has prospered financially, even as its resistance to change has distanced it from society.[87] In this respect, “in no profession is the gulf greater between ideals and practices than it is for lawyers” and the legal profession:[88]
“Ideally, justice is a universal good: the law protects equally the rights of the rich and the poor, the giant corporation and the small business, the innocent and the criminal accused. The ethical imperative that lawyers must zealously serve the interests of their clients can be justified, and reconciled with the goal of universal justice, only if all other affected parties (including the clients’ adversaries) will be competently represented as well. In practice, of course, access to the complex and expensive procedures of law and the services of lawyers is largely determined by clients’ ability to pay: the major share of legal services goes to business entities and wealthy people. The lawyers who enjoy the greatest professional success and prestige do most of their work on behalf of the rich and powerful.”
Importantly … it isn’t just the poorest [members of the public] who cannot afford our [legal] system. It’s nearly everyone.
– Stanford Center on the Legal Profession[89]
The legal profession’s regulated monopoly on legal services and financial success has come at a steep price – high profits, but the compromised health and well-being of its workforce,[90] an obscured purpose, and lack of access to affordable legal services for the middle- and working-class public. A majority of people in Western society – in particular within the U.S. and Canada – believe the legal system is primarily accessible only to corporations and the wealthy. And the data confirms this.[91]
The legal system is widely perceived as lacking accessibility, transparency, diversity reflective of the society it purports to serve, and indifference to serving justice and equity. Public trust in lawyers, legal institutions, the system of justice, and the vitality of the rule of law are historically low.[92] And this is a fundamental problem for our society – why, because our democratic society and institutions are based on the Rule of Law under which access to justice is an essential element. It is a foundational part of our legal system:[93]
“Access to a public system of courts and tribunals to have disputes resolved and to exercise one’s rights and freedoms, in accordance with the Rule of Law, is one of the clearest demonstrations of a functioning democracy. Ensuring access to justice is thus in keeping with the best traditions of democratic society.
Canada has long recognized that rights should not be curtailed merely because a person lacks the resources to defend them. Those with the least financial resources often experience the greatest attacks on their rights. If Canadians cannot access the courts because of financial impediments, they will lose faith in our democratic system. The long term consequences will be harmful at all levels of our society. As the Supreme Court has stated:
‘Ensuring access to justice is the greatest challenge to the rule of law in Canada today. Trials have become increasingly expensive and protracted. Most Canadians cannot afford to sue when they are wronged or defend themselves when they are sued, and cannot afford to go to trial. Without an effective and accessible means of enforcing rights, the rule of law is threatened.’
The crucial element in upholding the Rule of Law is that those involved in a justiciable legal dispute have clear paths to achieving just and timely outcomes, whether that is a court judgment, a tribunal decision, an agreement through a dispute resolution process, or otherwise.”
Canada has one of the best legal systems in the world: independent judges, well-trained lawyers, predictable laws, and an open court process. Unfortunately, most Canadians cannot afford to use it. Largely because of cost, very few Canadians will be able to afford to resolve these types of legal problems – particularly if they try to use the formal justice system. Getting legal help is expensive.
– Canadian Forum on Civil Justice[94]
Adrian Vermeule, a Harvard constitutional law professor, considered the state of the legal profession in a New York Times article earlier this year. Professor Tyler’s assessment was stark and unsettling: “Something has gone badly wrong: It is unclear, in America in 2022” – and I would include Canada here – “what the point of law is, what higher ends it should strive to attain. We have forgotten what law is for”.[95] As noted by former Chief Justice McLachlin:[96]
“The cry for access to justice is rising from what was once a dull murmur to a crescendo. Other actors – including courts and governments – bear much of the responsibility. But lawyers can be a big part of the solution. Everyone needs justice. Lawyers hold the key to the exclusive domain called justice. But they open the doors only to a privileged few, the critics charge.
The sad truth is that around the world, the legal profession and the courts are often not fulfilling the expectations of consumers of legal services. Legal systems everywhere are experiencing an access to justice crisis that cries out for innovative solutions. Legal aid funding and coverage is not available for most people and problems, and the cost of legal services and length of proceedings is steadily increasing.
Fulfilling the public’s expectations for justice – in a phrase, providing ‘access to justice’ – is vital. It is vital to providing the justice to which every person is entitled.”
As noted, “many of society’s legal needs are going unmet”. Affordable legal services are no longer accessible to the majority of our citizens.[97] The remarkable rise of pro se (unrepresented) litigants and default judgments in U.S. and Canadian courts may be seen as a “smoking gun” in the case for re-regulation. Notwithstanding remarkable advances in technology, there is a dearth of public facing legal technology self-help tools and affordable representation available to the majority of the public that simply cannot afford a lawyer.
Access to justice becoming a privilege of the rich, judge warns.
– Globe and Mail[98]
Lawyer fees are too expensive, and “statistics support the view that accessing the justice system with the help of a legal professional is increasingly unaffordable to most people. Nearly 12 million Canadians will experience at least one legal problem in a given three-year period, yet few will have the resources to solve them. According to an American study” as much as “70%-90% of legal needs in society go unmet”,[99] and by some estimates as many as two-thirds of individuals in Canada.[100] The traditional legal marketplace and law firms in North America are not aligned in respect to the interests of legal consumers (both retail and corporate). As such:[101]
“The legal profession is perceived as not fulfilling the expectations of the consumer, and the discontent runs deep: over 70% of individuals in Canada and the U.S. – including small business owners – cannot afford legal representation due to its excessive cost. Furthermore, corporate clients are migrating legal work away from BigLaw and traditional law firms in favour of innovative, efficient, and cost effective alternative legal service providers – in particular their own legal departments (reportedly now handling approximately 73% of the corporation’s legal work). It is fair to say that the current ‘lawyer only’ legal services delivery model has not been working well for consumers.”
And, as noted, while the middle- and working-class have limited access to the “legal system” and its judicial institutions, they are still required to financially underwrite the system “through their tax dollars”.[102] This despite the fact that in many instances a licensed lawyer may not even be required or even the best equipped to affordably respond to the challenge of a particular legal need. Ouch.
A walk through history helps tell the tale. For many years, large law firms had carte blanche to charge whatever they wanted for their services …. The undercurrent of resentment from this perceived exploitation was most acutely experienced.
– Jill Dessalines[103]
The majority of the population in North American cannot afford to hire a lawyer for their legal needs, or to represent them in a court or administrative hearing. In the U.S. nearly 60% of the population do not have enough savings to cover a $1000 (or even a $500) unplanned expense or emergency,[104] and in Canada 50% of the country would not be able to come up with $2,500 (particularly considering that 61% of Canadians who have borrowed money to cover day-to-day expenses over the last two years have yet to pay it back).[105] As nearly half of Americans fall deeper in to debt, the same amount of Canadians are on the brink of insolvency.[106]
We are living in an era of extreme and widening income and wealth inequality. It is bad even before one considers the dragon at the door: debt. Today’s young adults are more indebted than their parents or grandparents, and it is only getting worse.[107] Today’s society has “more income and wealth inequality than at any time in the last hundred years. In the year 2022, three multibillionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of American society” (160 million Americans), and in Canada 41 billionaires have the same wealth as 40% of the population (15 million Canadians). Today, “45% of all new income goes to the top 1%, and CEOs of large corporations make a record-breaking 350 times what their workers earn”. Working families continue to struggle, and “despite huge increases in worker productivity, wages (accounting for real inflation) are lower today than they were almost 50 years ago”.[108] On both sides of the U.S./Canada border the fundamental trend is towards an ever-widening wealth gap between the middle- and working- class and the most privileged in society:[109]
“A strong and prosperous middle class is crucial for any successful economy and cohesive society. … However, current findings reveal that the top 10% in the income distribution holds almost half of the total wealth, while the bottom 40% accounts for only 3%. The OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) has also documented that economic insecurity concerns a large group of the population: more than one in three people are economically vulnerable …. [A] situation that has become economically and politically unsustainable as it undermines public trust in policy and institutions.”
And, despite the fact that most of the public’s legal needs continue to go unmet by the current lawyer-centric legal system, the self-regulated legal profession’s regulatory structures – in the main – continue to perpetuate the access to justice crisis by limiting access by the public to affordable and capable nonlawyer legal help and services.
Access to justice is a foundational part of the justice system… If you cannot access legal help, you are not equal before the law. If you cannot access legal advice, you are not getting access to justice. The situation is pretty dire.
– Lubna Shuja, Vice President of the Law Society of England and Wales[110]
So, what does this all mean for legal professionals and the skills and mindset needed to address this glaring societal problem – this underserved or unmet retail (individuals) and small business legal market? The Core technical lawyer competencies (legal reasoning, advocacy and counsel, research, writing) remain elemental, but alone they are certainly not enough to meet these challenges (setting aside the issue if there is even a strong desire to do so within the legal profession itself).
First, there needs to be an understanding that there is indeed a market here for the enterprising lawyers and legal organizations that can figure out an appropriate business and legal service delivery model to cost-effectively meet this unmet demand. Second, the legal profession must recognize that the delivery of legal services to the public must be affordable, whether provided through the services of a lawyer or alternative provider. If lawyers and their law firms wish to remain viable to the public consumer they must become more innovative, efficient, and affordable in this era of digital transformation, evolving their operating model to incorporate the appropriate use of technology, process, technical and multi-disciplinary talent, and – most importantly – competitive alternative staffing models and eco-systems of legal and nonlawyer partners and providers. Sadly, the new legal economy is an illustration of the principle that while the profession might share the same facts, its lawyers can still refuse to share a reality. A lawyer’s traditional skillsets (i.e. identification of law, distillation of facts, prediction of resolution of problem based on precedent) and narrow mindset (i.e. fixed, precedent focused, linear thinking, risk averse) does not encourage strategic theory and thinking, innovation, creativity, adaptability and agility, cross-functional collaboration with nonlawyers, or risk-taking.[111]
Further, how will the next generation of lawyers address this situation when they themselves arrive into the legal business world saddled by heavy debt (which financial pressure must be immediately addressed by obtaining clients or an employer that can provide substantive compensation) and a limited understanding – if they have the bandwidth in light of their own financial circumstances – of the underlying root causes of the ‘legal services gap’ and ‘access to justice crisis’ faced by a majority of our society’s citizens. Most students enrolling in law school are forced to take out loans which saddle the average law graduate with tens of thousands in debt, and for many a debt that exceeds six figures (not including interest). In addition, they lack practice-ready skills upon entry into the legal marketplace because many law schools continue to “teach students how to ‘think like a lawyer’” even as the actual ‘real world’ legal role is being reconfigured not by lawyers but by business and/or economics. Many full-time law school faculty have little or no legal practice or industry experience, little practical understanding of the marketplace, or a less than robust awareness of new career paths open to agile, inquisitive, team-oriented graduates.[112] Legal education excels at producing highly-trained lawyers in respect to substantive legal knowledge but fails to inculcate a holistic range of skills, knowledge, and competencies demanded by clients of 21st century legal services. No law student in today’s legal environment should graduate without having a basic understanding of the “T-Shaped Lawyer” (i.e. legal skills and knowledge, other disciplines including multidisciplinary skills such as technology, business, data analysis, project management, teamwork (including technical and multi-disciplinary lawyer and nonlawyer roles), design thinking, mindsets), the “Delta Model” lawyer (i.e. T-Shaped Lawyer plus personal effectiveness, business and operations, technical law), or the “O-shaped lawyer” (i.e. well rounded; combine technical competence with emotionally intelligent approach: smarts and hearts). Unfortunately, even today many law students enter the legal business world without the mindset, competencies, or clear understanding of the knowledge and tools to recognize, evaluate and appropriately address legal and business opportunity and risk.[113]
Just keeping it real: When I graduate law school I’ll have close to $200,000 of debt.
– Canadian law student Lillian Molek, quoted in Globe and Mail, September 30, 2022[114]
As history has shown us to date, it is unlikely that licensed lawyers and their bar associations and regulators, acting alone, will bring about the appropriate and required level of innovation, nonlawyer collaboration, and regulatory changes to address the public’s overwhelming and unmet legal needs. Until the legal profession embraces this reality and chooses to leverage disruptive change – in particular nonlawyer alternative legal service delivery – this critical challenge in respect to the ‘legal services gap’ and ‘access to justice crisis’ will continue to expand in scope and complexity unabated:[115]
“A more holistic set of competencies wielded by a more diverse group of legal professionals is required to address increasingly complex challenges in an increasingly complex world. … When armed with agile, iterative frameworks like the Delta Model, we have the capacity to prepare accordingly and include all stakeholders [think nonlawyers such as paralegals and new tech platform developers that could help the public resolve basic legal issues on their own] in identifying and amplifying the most important competencies needed to deliver legal services in this Fourth Industrial Revolution and beyond.”
The highest barriers to access to the legal system are its legal costs and then its complexity. In this respect, as referenced above, Courts and their proceedings are complicated, protracted, backlogged, and opaque. Their slow pace and byzantine processes are out-of-synch with the speed and intuitiveness of the digital world. The community sentiment is increasingly challenging the hegemony of judicial resolution. Things do not have to be this way. What is lacking is the willingness of the judiciary—and the broader legal industry—to challenge the status quo and to consistently and extensively utilize available tools, resources, and new delivery models. These resources would improve access, efficiency, affordability, user-experience and scalability of dispute resolution.[116]
The self-regulated legal profession – seen by critics as guilds protecting the monopoly domain of their lawyer members – appear to routinely limit their solutions to nibbling around the edges of the required reform and legal modernization. Worse still are those many jurisdictions across the U.S. and Canada in which the legal profession and its regulators simply oppose regulatory reform intended to better serve the public.[117] As noted by a U.S. Supreme Court Justice in the Wall Street Journal, even today in the U.S., “every time LegalZoom [a provider of online tools for routine legal tasks, i.e. incorporation of a business] wants to go to a new state they get sued for unauthorized practice of law, it’s never by a consumer; it’s always a lawyer” who files legal suit against the innovative nonlawyer legal service technology provider.[118]
Legal services in this country are so expensive that the United States ranks near the bottom of developed nations when it comes to access to counsel in civil cases. … [O]n the road to change perhaps we should begin by asking first what we can do on our own [as a self-regulating legal profession] … and whether and to what degree our own self-imposed rules [and barriers] increase the cost of legal services and decrease access to justice in unwarranted ways?
– Justice Neil Gorsuch[119]
If the legal profession does not soon find its purpose – and act on it – there will be grave consequences. And frankly, if the legal profession is unwilling or unable to provide “prompt and affordable” legal services to a substantial majority of the public, people in search of legal services and justice should be permitted to go elsewhere. As noted by a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada:[120]
“[T]he monopoly that the legal profession has traditionally enjoyed on the delivery of legal services, is eroding. Historically, it was widely accepted that only qualified lawyers – practitioners vetted and certified by bar associations – were permitted to provide legal services to clients, and then only through specific types of organizations, such as partnerships. These assumptions no longer prevail. In the age of the Internet, people are questioning why they, the consumers of legal product, should be forced to go to expensive lawyers working in expensive office buildings located in expensive urban centres. Why, they ask, should a client retain lawyers, when integrated professional firms can deliver accounting, financial and legal advice? Why are simple disputes not resolved in simple, cost-effective mediation rather than by elaborate and expensive court proceedings? Public attitudes and demands are changing.
Demands to relax the laws and regulations that govern who can offer legal services and how they should be rendered are following swiftly on the heels of questions like these.
I am not talking about the future, but of now. Consider the licensing and regulation of paralegals. In 2004, the Attorney General of Ontario asked the Law Society to expand its public interest jurisdiction and provide independent oversight over paralegals. Licensed paralegals in Ontario are ‘professionals’ who meet standards of competence and training. Whether representing clients in small claims court or traffic court, or guiding them through the procedures of administrative tribunals, paralegals increasingly fill legal needs of those who find lawyers too expensive, but are unable to navigate the legal system without professional assistance.
Liberalization of the rules that govern the legal profession is rapidly spreading to other jurisdictions. … Everywhere, more and more, the profession is accepting that the old monopolies are fading and that the profession must embrace new ways of doing business. And increasingly calls are heard for law schools to adapt their curricula to these new realities. The question is not whether the rules governing the legal profession should be liberalized, but how.”
In Canada and the U.S. the applicable provincial and state governments have granted the legal profession the right to self-governance and self-regulation – the delegation of authority that the state would normally hold in respect to the provision of legal services.[121] Self-regulation permits the legal profession to wield significant power, including the ability to keep the legal services market in North America – and the legal profession’s guild model of designing and delivering monopoly protected legal services – as limited or closed to nonlawyer outsiders as possible depending on the jurisdiction.[122]
The downside of delegating broad regulatory powers to the legal profession is that such delegation may not always produce regulation that serves public interest objectives, but rather may represent the immediate interests of its lawyer members at the expense of, and instead of, the broader interests of society and the public.[123] Critics say that by essentially restricting the practice of law to licensed lawyers in the 21st century, lawyers are looking to protect their own interests while relying on the cover provided by the historical regulation position centered around the protection of consumers.[124]
Now, calls for regulatory change are coming from an unlikely alliance of legal innovators, legal and judicial leaders, academia, corporate and business interests, and access to justice advocates. Access to justice advocates argue consumers are not in fact protected when so many are underserved, particularly the middle- and working-class and lower income brackets. Legal innovators note that the practice of law and traditional lawyer-centric delivery of legal services is inefficient and in desperate need of a tune-up that more closely aligns licensed lawyers and traditional law firm interests with public imperatives.
In this respect, broad agreement exists that current regulatory regimes present significant barriers to innovation, and that regulatory change in the law is needed (including the easing of restrictions on the unauthorized practice of law). [125] Representatives from both camps posit that the roadmap for addressing the ‘access to justice crisis’ will require both innovation goals and institutional and structural goals.
And the good news is that technology and public facing tech platforms, allied professionals (such as licensed paralegals or paraprofessionals), [126] as well as other forms of liberalization and reform such as multidisciplinary practices, show incredible promise and successful results in addressing unmet legal needs.
But these exciting ideas and solutions threaten the status quo and face stiff political winds from a strong contingent of practicing lawyers – their trade groups, and in many cases their bar associations and regulators – who oppose competition from these type of alternative legal services. In this atmosphere it is more important than ever that the legal profession’s regulators act in the public’s interest, evaluating new and/or improved ideas – in respect to the delivery of cost-effective, quality legal services to the pubic – on their merits. The focus must be on the needs and protection of the public, not the protection and preservation of the legal profession’s historical monopoly on the delivery of legal services.
The state of affairs in which “prices for legal services are beyond the reach of average consumers” is “antithetical to principles of democracy”[127] and our fundamental values as a free society. Whether new forms of legal service professional (paralegal, paraprofessional, legal navigator) and legal technology (online tech platforms) will ultimately benefit consumers will depend on: (a) how those nonlawyer professionals are trained, licensed, and regulated, and (b) how comprehensive public facing technological solutions are developed, implemented and appropriately delivered and reviewed.
The word “alternative” is definitely trending in the legal zeitgeist. Beginning with the U.K. Legal Services Act and accelerating through the legal tech startup boom, discussion about the growing importance of alternative business structures (ABSs) and alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) has become a cottage industry in the legal press, and increasingly in the legal academy as well. And for good reason.
– ‘Taking the ‘Alternative’ out of Alternative Legal Service Providers’, The Practice, Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School[128]
Systemic Solution(s)
Not surprisingly, the public – retail and corporate consumers of legal services – are looking for legal service providers that are ‘better, faster, cheaper’, and deliver ‘more-for-less’.[129] The “reality on the ground” is that “change is badly needed”,[130] particularly in light of the legal profession’s monopoly[131] on the delivery of legal services – and its hostility to competition from nonlawyer business models and their innovative alternative legal services and alternative business structures (ABS)[132]:[133]
“The monopoly so assiduously defended by provincial law societies needs to be dissolved.
In the U.K. … there was no rule that all legal work had to be done by somebody with a law degree and a valid bar licence. … The U.K. has a long history of allowing a wide variety of differently trained individuals and organizations to provide legal assistance – and they have opened up the market more in this century.
Indeed, in many cases, people are better served by a non-lawyer organization that specializes in legal help — navigating housing or bankruptcy matters, for example — than they are by a solo lawyer with a general practice.
The changes the U.K. made in the [legal profession’s] regulatory environment are essential, necessary. … You can’t get to the world of less-expensive, more-healthful, more-accessible legal help without changing those regulations.
[However, as advocated by the eminent Professor or law, Gillian Hadfield – who says it is time to end self-regulation by lawyers in the U.S. and Canada -] [t]he U.K. did not go far enough … It didn’t move far enough away from the historical approaches and, to be honest, did not get it independent of oversight of lawyers.”
Ultimately, it is Professor Hadfield’s view that we need to build an independent regulator of legal service providers. In her words, we need risk-adjusted, outcome-based regulation, rather than to dictate business structures and practices. Put another way, instead of sticking with the traditional model where lawyers dominate the delivery of legal services, we need to look at new regulation models that allow for affordable service delivery that is appropriate and proportionate to the person’s legal problem.
– National Self-Represented Litigants Project[134]
To date, the protectionist forces in the U.S. and Canadian legal establishments are more influential than advocates of the public interest and competition.[135] This position by the legal profession in the UK was one of the main reasons the profession lost the right of self-regulation. In the UK “a two-year exhaustive study of the British legal delivery system” concluded that the public was “not being well-served by the self-regulated legal profession”, finding that:[136]
“In both segments of the market [corporate and retail], clients were not being well-served by the self-regulated legal profession; that law was a monopoly; that the legal delivery system was broken and needed to be repaired; and that client interest should be accorded primacy over lawyers’ (self-) interest.”
One may be surprised by the approach of the legal profession’s regulators in North America – eschewing appropriate regulatory reform – when most retail consumers and small businesses cannot afford legal representation, and corporations are intentionally migrating most of their legal work away from traditional law firms. If this continues, one can expect a loss of public confidence in self-regulation, similar to what occurred in the UK.[137]
A small band of legal commentators and academics have gone so far as to suggest that “it is time to end self-regulation by lawyers, as well as their monopoly on providing legal services”.[138]
To oppose the provision of legal services by non-lawyers with lower fees impedes members of the public seeking access to justice, and harms the reputation of our [legal] profession. We have to look at the public interest first and the parochial interests of lawyers second. … Non-lawyers have a role to play in assisting people with their legal problems – and lawyers today must recognize that.
– Gavin Mackenzie, Should lawyers have a monopoly over the provision of legal services?[139]
Public attitudes are changing, bringing demands to relax the laws and regulations that govern who can offer legal services and how they should be rendered.[140] The goal is not “deregulation”, but “reregulation” – the goal is to “increase access” to cost effective and appropriately regulated “legal services that the” consumer (retail or corporate) “can trust delivered by legal service providers who are part of a larger legal community”.[141] In this respect, the greatest concern today for the legal profession and the ethical practice of law in Canada and the U.S. should be simultaneously allowing licensed nonlawyers and ABSs, while appropriately addressing regulation to all legal services providers (in particular, non-law firm, non-traditional alternative providers of legal services such as paraprofessionals and entities that provide public facing technological legal services such as LegalZoom). From a policy perspective this will expand the delivery of competitive legal services, protect consumers, and maintain the integrity of the legal profession.[142]
Legal services regulation must be modernized in Canada and the U.S. to encourage models of legal service delivery to the public that is more innovative, more effective (increase value), and more affordable (reduce cost) in a market that is evolving, and in doing so, it must remain responsive to the needs of consumers who use or need legal services.[143]
The law firm partnership is a poor institutional choice for the delivery of legal services in today’s legal market. Its structure fails to serve virtually all of its stakeholders.
– Professor Johnathan Molot[144]
So how do we achieve this type of big picture solution?
What we know is that the legal system’s must serve the needs not only of clients that engage it but also society-at-large.[145] However, we also know that any solution that explores regulatory reform and pathways to low-cost, quality legal assistance, including broadly licensing paraprofessionals and creating online technological options, will likely be opposed by the legal profession. Why, because these types of ideas threaten the legal profession’s status quo and therefore face stiff political winds from lawyers and legal leaders who oppose competition from new legal services.[146]
Until relatively recently, throughout the world, legal services have by law only been delivered to the consumer by traditional law firms that are wholly owned and controlled by lawyers.[147]
This justice gap is unacceptable. And it’s growing. The legal profession must consider regulatory reform if we ever hope to make progress on this long-standing, intractable problem.
– Justice Constandinos Himonas and Vice Chief Justice Ann Scott, ‘Reform the legal system to close the justice gap’[148] .
Jurisdictions across the world – in particular the UK, Australia, and certain EU countries – have grappled with and implemented solutions to the challenge of providing high-quality legal services to the public at an affordable cost. With the goal of modernizing the delivery of legal services and encouraging competition, reducing prices, and spurring innovation,[149] over a decade ago the UK, Australia and other countries dropped the “lawyer only” prohibition, proactively initiating regulations allowing firms to adopt alternative business structures (ABS).[150]
What is an ABS? This can be looked at broadly or narrowly under “entity regulation” (which is discussed in more detail below). An ABS “is a regulated organization which provides legal services and has some form of non-lawyer involvement” – whether ownership/management, investment, or engagement in legal services or multidisciplinary practices. It can refer to any means through which legal services are delivered to the public (other than the traditional lawyer owned practice that provides legal services only), and depending on the form it takes, provides a vehicle for allowing more extensive non-lawyer ownership, potentially all the way to 100%, and allowing greater mixing of legal and non-legal services. This would of course include the provision of legal services through regulated paralegals / paraprofessionals – think regulated ‘Nurse Practitioners’ in the medical field who can treat patients and prescribe medication[151] – or even more broadly to include providing legal services through technology (internet). [152]
In finding solutions, leaders in the judiciary, law, academia and business across Canada and the United States have looked to how these different countries have incorporated non-lawyers into the provision of legal services in order to reduce costs. For example, by expanding the scope of legal services non-lawyers can provide in order to lower prices, expanding the scope of legal technology in the delivery of legal services to the public, or by letting non-lawyers manage, invest in, or own law firms in order to increase the variety and supply of legal services available.[153]
The issue should be the competent delivery of legal services, whether provided by a lawyer or not. Legal services provided at a lower cost by specialist nonlawyers who act as competently as a lawyer benefits the public. Outside of the province of Ontario (in Canada), the state of Washington in the U.S. was the first to offer affordable legal support for individuals through a limited license legal technicians program (LLLTs) that commenced in 2012. LLLTs are nonlawyer paraprofessionals providing legal services to the public, and have been opposed by the legal profession in that state. Today, no further nonlawyers may obtain the LLLT licence to provide legal services to the public (although pursuant to a ‘sunset initiative’ current licencees in good standing may continue in their role of providing limited legal services to the public).[154] These paraprofessionals received extensive training and earned a license before they were permitted to offer legal services to the public. LLLTs assisted people with family-law matters, such as divorce and child custody cases, performing some of the following tasks: (1) obtained relevant facts for clients; (2) informed clients of the legal implications of the law as applied to their cases; (3) performed legal research on behalf of clients; and (4) drafted legal documents to be filed with the court. A “study conducted by the American Bar Foundation and the National Center for State Courts found that despite some kinks in the program, LLLTs succeed in assisting clients who lacked resources to afford legal representation. The study concluded that the program ‘should be replicated in other states to improve access to justice’”.[155] A number of other U.S. states are considering licensing paralegals / paraprofessionals in light of the Washington model. As Justice Bonkalo (formerly Chief Justice, Ontario Court of Justice) and Professor Semple point out, “[i]f we trust a newly licensed lawyer with no family law training to hang out a shingle and offer quality family law services, it is hard to believe that a highly experienced paralegal would be unable to do so”.[156] In 2016, Justice Bonkalo noted and recommended as follows for the province of Ontario, a jurisdiction of over 14 million people:[157]
“[I]t is beyond dispute that a significant proportion of those who represent themselves say that they do so for financial reasons and that they want help.
I would note that, after paralegal regulation was first introduced in Ontario, various reports have suggested a greater role for paralegals to play in providing access to justice for unrepresented litigants. The 2008 Trebilcock report on legal aid suggested that the use of paralegals be maximized. The 2012 Morris report on the review of paralegal regulation recommended considering whether the scope of practice of paralegals should be expanded, but that this be linked to enhanced paralegal education, training and professional conduct. The 2013 Law Commission report also contemplated paralegals possibly providing some family law services.
As a result, I am recommending that paralegals be permitted to provide some family law services without supervision by lawyers. My recommendation to enhance the scope of work performed by paralegals is contingent on the implementation of related recommendations to develop a specialized training program and licensing scheme that would be required before any family law services could be offered. …
I have focused on paralegals because they are already regulated by the Law Society. As a result, they seem to be a natural starting point with respect to the provision of family legal services by persons other than lawyers. There is already a regulatory scheme in place upon which to build. …
I would, however, further recommend that, at the five-year review, the Law Society consider whether it would be appropriate to allow others, such as mediators, law clerks and community legal workers, to undertake various forms of training to independently provide legal services in family matters. …
As was the case in 2006, when paralegal regulation was first introduced in Ontario, the issue of legal service delivery brings to the fore the two imperatives of access to justice and protection of the public. After reading all the written submissions and hearing the diverse views expressed, it is clear to me that unrepresented litigants in family law need more options in obtaining legal assistance to resolve their family disputes.
Thus, I have made recommendations …. The most controversial recommendations, however, will be those with respect to the provision of legal services in family matters by paralegals with a specialized licence in family law.
It will now be incumbent upon the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Law Society of Upper Canada, to whom I submit this report, to determine the path forward.”
Indeed, studies have shown that the best predictor of quality is ‘specialization, not professional status’.[158]
Non-lawyers – whether through the provision of paralegal services or comprehensive legal technology – will play an increasingly important role in law and legal services delivery, “and – consistent with the law of supply and demand – increasing the supply of legal services can be expected to lower prices, drive efficiency, and improve consumer satisfaction”.[159] ABSs and new models of delivering legal services will depend on utilizing a wide range of professionals, not only lawyers.[160]
An alternative business structure [ABS] can refer to any means through which legal services are delivered to the public, other than the traditional lawyer owned practice that provides legal services only.
– Richard Devlin and Ora Morison[161]
In this respect, since 2020, in the United States both Utah and Arizona have dramatically revised the rules around legal practice ownership and unauthorized practice of law. And several other states and provinces are considering reforms, including California, Michigan, and North Carolina, Ontario and British Columbia in Canada,[162] among others – although the lawyer’s bar recently influenced the state legislature to put California’s efforts for legal innovation, paralegal regulation, technology, and access to justice review and reform on hold.[163] Many proposed reforms are operating in tandem with working groups using “regulatory sandboxes” for legal services: a controlled policy environment where regulatory constraints on the “unauthorized practice of law”, “sharing legal fees”, and “non-lawyer ownership” are relaxed – with appropriate oversight – to test out innovative approaches to cost-effective legal service delivery models while protecting the public. A September 2022 study from Stanford Law School on the regulatory sandboxes in Arizona and Utah, discussed in a 59-page report by the school’s Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, provides an early guide to types of regulatory changes and their impact on the delivery of legal services:[164]
“Any jurisdiction considering regulatory reform faces several core design choices. At the outset, states must decide whether to pursue Tramadol Buy Online Usa entity regulation via the authorization and regulation of entities or organizations, Tramadol Legal To Buy role regulation, such as paraprofessional licensure programs that authorize individual nonlawyer providers to practice law in defined legal areas, or some of both. …
Intensifying concerns about a widening justice gap and a lack of competition within legal markets are leading many jurisdictions to initiate changes to their regulatory framework. The objectives and mechanisms of reforms differ across jurisdictions, but each effort is united by the goal of opening up the legal sector to new types of providers and new approaches to delivering services.
…
Conclusion: The access to justice problem in the U.S. is deep and costly, and a growing body of evidence suggests that the various rules that restrict the delivery of legal services are at least in part to blame. … [R]eforms in Utah and Arizona are now far enough along that we can begin to draw more reliable inferences about the likely effects of rule reforms in U.S. legal markets. This Report has leveraged newly available evidence from both states in order to answer two questions that are critically important to state decisionmakers as they weigh reforms: What types of innovation in legal services will result from different reforms? And who will be served by those innovations?
The evidence gathered in this Report shows that rule reforms can spur significant innovation, both in the ownership structure of legal services providers and in the delivery models used to serve clients. Importantly, the innovation that is emerging in Utah and Arizona is hardly the sole province of nonlawyers or technologists. To the contrary, much of the legal innovation in evidence in both states involves lawyers, whether traditional law firms exploring new, tiered service delivery models, or companies building out legal verticals by hiring lawyers to practice within them. While ironclad predictions about the future remain unwise, the evidence thus far suggests that lawyers, far from being displaced by newly configured entities and new service delivery models, will instead face a host of new opportunities to extend their reach via a mix of conventional service delivery, nonlawyer assistance, and software that were not possible previously.
That said, and while the Utah and Arizona reforms are yielding substantial innovation, the evidence thus far suggests important differences in the results from the two states’ contrasting reform approaches. Reforms permitting access to outside capital alone (ABS-only), while likely to result in increases in diversification and innovation within the market serving corporations, small businesses, and the middle class, may be less likely to yield providers that serve low income and indigent people. An ABS+UPL approach, in which regulated entities not only can access new sources of capital but can also develop service innovations that deploy nonlawyers and technology, is more likely to see nonprofit participation, more likely to spur creation of lower-cost service tiers, and more likely to impact the justice gap for low-income individuals, where access concerns are typically most acute. Other states considering regulatory reform should recognize that their regulatory choices will impact the outcomes of reform.”
“Entity regulation” reform addresses the licencing and regulation of entities providing legal services. “Role regulation” reform involves paralegal or paraprofessional reforms that create a licensure process – usually a limited licensure based on the experience in Ontario and several states in the U.S. to date – to permit nonlawyers to provide certain legal services within specific practice areas. It is recommended that both types of regulation can and should be utilized in parallel if a particular jurisdiction is not looking to appoint a new separate independent regulatory body of legal service providers (thereby ending self-regulation by the legal profession):[165]
“Note that entity-based regulation can exist alongside role regulation—for instance, licensed doctors working within regulated hospitals, or licensed paraprofessionals working within a regulated law company. But entity-level regulation also enables provision of services by unregulated roles, including nonlawyers or software [legal technology], within the regulated entity. …
There are other design choices as well. As already noted, a second key design choice is the reform lever: whether to change the rules outright or, instead, create a regulatory sandbox—a space within which entities can seek waivers of rules, subject to ongoing oversight by regulators. Still other choices must be made if a state creates a new regulatory body to preside over the authorization process or perform ongoing oversight. They include: how much to scrutinize authorized entities beyond their admission to the system, where to locate and how to structure a body that presides over admission to the system and/or exercises regulatory oversight, whether the unit of regulation is to be individuals, entities, or both, whether entities are to be subject to other existing rules of professional responsibility that govern lawyers (e.g., duties of confidentiality), and what standard of care applies to claims of harm.”
As a functional matter, as discussed, the lawyer monopoly of legal services is responsible to a large degree for the lack of affordable legal service delivery options that might otherwise be made available to the public in a more diversified legal market. And in light of the extent of the “access to justice crisis” today, it is tempting to look for simple solutions to the crisis. However, for reforms to be meaningful and sustainable, a key message that must be understood is that regulated paralegals / paraprofessionals and technology – while extremely important as “part of the solution” – cannot be seen as “the solution”, or as a shortcut to recapture years of resistance and stiff political winds from the legal profession, legal leaders, and regulators who have opposed competition from new and alternative legal service providers.
In this respect, looking at jurisdictions and ideas from across the legal world, it is apparent that to achieve the goal of comprehensively addressing the access to justice crisis will require systemic reform, innovation, and expansion of the way legal services are delivered to the public. A more fulsome consideration of the crisis and comprehensive reform is called for by policymakers – in conjunction with this article’s specific recommendations in respect to regulated paralegals and public facing technology – and which I have addressed from a big picture perspective below:
- Formalizing the role of paralegals and paraprofessionals – by reducing or eliminating the exclusive rights to practice law enjoyed by lawyers in the U.S. and Canada – is a low-cost way to provide access to legal services and justice for economically marginalized groups.[166] Nonlawyer paralegals and paraprofessionals as specialists in particular areas of the law can do more than adequate jobs, particularly in areas such as family law, employment law, and debtor/creditor law for example.[167] Some states and provinces in the US and Canada have created limited roles for nonlawyers in the legal system. In Canada, various provincial bars have allowed for an increasing role for non-lawyers in the provision of legal services.[168] In leading jurisdictions such as Ontario (to possibly be joined by British Columbia),[169] paralegals are regulated, and can independently provide some limited legal services – however, even here paralegals are specifically limited and excluded from key areas of legal practice where the need is greatest (i.e. family law legal services) due to the overt resistance from family lawyers and lawyer trade groups (i.e. Ontario Bar Association’s Family Law section, Family Lawyers Association). Arguably, not expanding the paralegal scope of practice to appropriately encompass family law matters and seeking other alternatives to the high cost of lawyers’ services has little to do with competence or access, but much to do with family lawyers’ exclusive monopoly over the family legal services market.[170]
- The European Union permits greater nonlawyer involvement in the delivery of legal services than North America. Like the U.S. and Canada, EU countries restrict entry to the legal profession, and reserve certain activities for it. However, in at least 14 countries across the EU nonlawyers can provide legal advice, and only some restrict transactional advice to the legal profession. European countries differ in how they define the scope of activities that are restricted to lawyers.[171]
- The UK and Australia reform is primarily driven by the goal of increasing competition in the legal services market. These jurisdictions permit legal practices to incorporate and involve nonlawyers in the investment and ownership of law firms in the legal sphere. Under the Legal Services Act 2007, the UK Parliament stated that its purpose in regulating legal services is not only the public interest, but “[protecting] and [promoting] consumer interests and competition.” In this vein, nonlawyers are permitted to invest in and own law firms, otherwise known as “alternative business structures”.[172] Having said that, while an important advance in the legal service delivery model, there are legitimate concerns that this particular solution may not create the economic incentive for legal professionals to offer cheaper services or work in underserviced areas required by the public (such as family and criminal law), focusing on more lucrative areas of law that can be commoditized.[173] According to a review conducted in 2016, “ABS reforms alone (were) not sufficient to effect dramatic changes in access to justice”.[174] Nevertheless, “given that the legal services market is highly competitive, it is probable that economic efficiencies realized as a result of liberalization would be passed onto clients and” the “economic gains that liberalization tends to promote would in turn tend to promote access to justice. In this respect, at least, economic and non-economic social goals are aligned”.[175]
- While strategies targeting the access to justice crisis in Canada have historically focused on refining existing court processes and incrementally increasing access to legal representation, technology is increasingly acknowledged as a means of creating new pathways to justice.[176] Nonlawyers have also been involved with innovating in the legal technology sphere, moving away from the traditional legal services delivery model of ‘one lawyer serving one client’ to a “one to many” model of legal service delivery.[177] Services like LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer and Upsolve provide legal services to the public online, providing users with legal form services, and – depending on the service – connecting them to practicing lawyers. Professor Judith McMorrow has noted that in the U.S. these companies need to work around the confines of the “unauthorized practice of law” regulations and laws prohibiting nonlawyers from providing legal services. To do so, for example, LegalZoom includes a disclaimer stating they are not lawyers, and cannot provide “legal advice, explanation or opinions.” Rather, the service states they merely connect the public with practicing lawyers. LegalZoom has successfully defended its technological legal services from numerous legal challenges in the U.S. from state bar associations and other organizations alleging that the company engages in the “unauthorized practice of law”. Legal services delivery through technology has been cost effective and successful, and is well placed to continue its growth with the public.[178]
- Paralegals and technology on their own is only part of the answer in solving the access to justice crisis. Although outside the scope of this article, big picture, what is required is a “full culture shift”, with “foundational reforms” and a comprehensive public-centered approach to “institutional design”. In countries around the world, justice systems – in particular the Courts – are rapidly digitizing. Big picture, if institutional redesign is supported during this transition in a cohesive and comprehensive fashion by all stakeholders (i.e. government, regulators, the legal profession and its bar associations, the Courts and tribunals, academia, researchers and technology developers and justice innovation hubs, and NGO initiatives, public-private collaborations, and business), technology could play a vital role in transforming legal service delivery so that all members of the public experiencing an essential civil or criminal justice legal need would have access to the legal system and some form of effective legal assistance.[179] Joint efforts and the cross-fertilization of research would enable a comprehensive mapping and analysis of recent developments and new frontiers, and would provide new pathways for implementation for civil, criminal and administrative justice. For example, with appropriate centralized leadership and funding a comprehensive systematic technological solution and institutional redesign – mapping technology onto access to justice that is in fact available today (illustrating the importance of conscious consideration of deliverables and the public need for access to justice in prioritizing technologies for deployment) – could look something like the following:[180]
- A. The strategy for implementing this type of vision has five main components:
- Creating in each province (Canada) and state (U.S.) a unified “legal portal” which, by an automated triage process, directs persons needing legal assistance to the most appropriate form of assistance and guides self-represented litigants through the entire legal process.
- Deploying sophisticated document assembly applications to support the creation of legal documents by legal service providers and by litigants themselves and linking the document creation process to the delivery of legal information and limited scope legal representation.
- Taking advantage of mobile technologies, videoconferencing, and online virtual hearings to reach more persons more effectively.
- Applying business process/analysis to all access-to-justice activities to make them as efficient as practicable.
- Developing “expert systems” to assist the public, lawyers and other services providers.
- B. The vision for achieving this is:
- Every province or state would create a province and/or statewide access portal that provides an easy way for a person to obtain assistance with a civil or criminal legal issue.
- The portal would use an automated process to refer each requester to the lowest-cost service likely to produce a satisfactory result in their case.
- The automated process would ultimately be informed by a sophisticated “triage” algorithm continually updated for each jurisdiction by feedback data on the outcomes for persons who have previously sought assistance through the portal.
- The portal would support a broad variety of access-to-justice services provided by courts, the private bar, legal aid entities, business and developers, and others who collaborate in implementing the initiative. The systems of all collaborating entities would exchange information automatically to support each other’s applications and to enable the accumulation and analysis of information on the functioning of the entire access-to-justice process.
- The baseline service available in a jurisdiction would be a website accessible through computers, tablets, or smartphones that provides sophisticated but easily understandable information on legal rights and responsibilities, legal remedies, and forms and procedures for pursuing those remedies. The province or statewide access portal would link a requester with the most appropriate section of the website.
- All of the collaborating entities in a jurisdiction would employ the same e-filing/smart forms and document assembly application, which would generate plain-language forms. The public would use the application themselves, or with lay or legal assistance, to choose a legal form or forms appropriate for their personal objectives and to complete the form by entering all required information through an on-line interview process.
- The e-filing/smart forms document assembly application would employ automated “smart document” tags for the information entered by a requester so that the information can be reused by all access-to-justice entities without requiring re-entry of the information.
- The e-filing/smart forms document assembly application would be linked to:
- the website for access to detailed information about the legal principles and terms underlying the form, including increased access to legal decisions and legislation and other legal information (i.e. demystifying the law; help users understand relevant law and available options).
- legal services providers, court self-help centers, chatbots, and other support entities for assistance that does not include legal advice.
- legal aid lawyers, private lawyers providing pro bono services (or private lawyers providing unbundled legal services if the requester is unable or unwilling to receive free legal services), and regulated paralegals and paraprofessionals for legal advice on some aspect of the requester’s legal situation.
- the court’s electronic filing and electronic payment applications.
- the access-to-justice entity’s case management application to store all tagged data for reuse.
- Forms generated by the e-filing/smart forms document assembly application would be universally accepted by courts and administrative tribunals in the province or state.
- All access-to-justice entities would employ a variety of automated and non-automated processes to make the best use of lawyers’, regulated paralegal’s (or other paraprofessional’s) time to assist requesters with their cases, including:
- conducting business process analyses to streamline their internal operations and their interactions with all collaborating entities.
- having clients/litigants perform as much data entry and handle as many of the functions involved in their cases as possible (given the nature of the case and the characteristics of the client/litigant).
- having nonlawyer paraprofessionals or lay staff perform a broad range of assistance activities not requiring the expertise of a lawyer.
- having expert systems and checklists and chatbots (etc.) available to assist and save time for lawyers and nonlawyer and lay service providers.
- maximizing the extent to which services are provided remotely rather than face- to-face, to promote access and save the time of both the clients/litigants and the service providers.
- The level of legal representation – lawyer, regulated paralegal, layperson, etc. – in a case would be guided by the province or state “triage” algorithm, which will be reviewed and revised regularly to make it as accurate as possible.
- Persons seeking more extensive legal services would be linked to legal aid offices, pro bono lawyers, regulated paralegals and other paraprofessionals, court self-help centers, or lawyer referral services.
- Mobile applications and videoconferencing would be deployed to promote access and assist requesters/clients/litigants.
- From the court administrators’ and judge/arbitrator’s point of view, legal technology and AI (including digital documents, videoconferencing and online virtual hearings), would be used to manage court infrastructure, predict the complexity of a case, allocate the appropriate resources, reduce costs, and promote access through videoconferencing and ultimately virtual courts. Court automatization, videoconferencing, and virtual courts would be the first stage in a wholesale deployment of AI in courts, administrative hearings, and at arbitrations in the coming years – including tools to help public users understand relevant law and available options (including negotiation, early neutral evaluation, mediation, etc.), formulate arguments and assemble evidence, and attend (whether unrepresented, or represented with a lawyer, regulated paralegal, etc.) and present their legal position to a judge or arbitrator.
- Evaluative information would be generated by automated systems routinely, presented to all collaborating entities regularly, and assessed collaboratively to refine and improve the access-to-justice process for the public.
Truly putting the public first … [v]irtual courts … [d]esigned thoughtfully … may foster increased participation, inclusion and engagement with the court process, promoting meaningful access to justice and a mutual respect between the justice system and its users. … As courts adapt to our new reality by incorporating technology into their day-to-day processes, it is imperative that they take the evidence-based and user-centered path forward, looking to needs of their users rather than the desires of the bench [judges] and bar [lawyers].
– ‘On the Design of Virtual Courts’, The Advocate[181]
Regulated paralegals, legal technology, and other proposed solutions should be seen and recognized as tools in the toolbox (albeit important tools) to boost the implementation of an appropriate, competitive, and well-designed legal services delivery model for members of the public who – due to financial reasons or otherwise – make a decision to utilize the designated services.
New legal service delivery models along these lines must be deployed in the legal marketplace with appropriate support from new capabilities, processes, technology, and organizational structures. These new or improved operating models, to be successful, will require working with an ecosystem of legal and non-legal partners to create client-centric best-in-class offerings, and take advantage of organizational design, processes, and technology developments that make it more efficient and less expensive to reach legal consumers and provide services – which in turn will increase cost-effective utilization for those legal services.
Lawyers are fighting innovative proposals for more affordable legal assistance. That’s wrong.
– Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times[182]
The legal profession in North America is here to serve society, it is not about dismantling the profession, but rather reimagining the legal profession acting with purpose and in the public interest to address the access to justice crisis. The legal profession in its current form is a damaged ideology that needs to be reinvented for the 21st century”:[183]
“This is a central lesson of legal history. ‘Lawyers, as a group, have never been the leaders of social movements,’ says [Ian] Kyer [who practiced at a Toronto Big Law firm for more than 30 years and wrote a book about his law firm’s 150-year history]. ‘They are followers. If a movement becomes well established, they might pay attention. But they don’t set out to be more open’.
The hyper-conservative nature of the legal profession helps explain the fact that Toronto law firms are still overwhelmingly white. Only 21 percent of lawyers self-identify as racialized or Indigenous, even though they represent 29 percent of Ontario’s population. And while women have made up at least half of the province’s law-school graduates over the past 25 years, they account for only 44 percent of lawyers and less than 25 percent of all partners in private practice.
These statistics are the result of weak leadership. The gatekeepers of the profession — that is, those with the power to hire and promote the next generation of talent — have routinely abandoned those who sit outside the dominant culture.
So how do we break this cycle? For starters, we can take a good look at our history. And we can learn from it. The legal profession does not have to repeat the mistakes of the past.”
The public is not well served by the present incarnation of the legal profession, and when the majority of citizens within a country cannot retain a lawyer due to the cost – something must be done! A new model for the delivery of legal services (that is not lawyer-centric) is needed that will serve all of society’s needs.
In corporate law, forms of nonlawyer ownership are becoming more common worldwide, with many innovators flying under the radar in the U.S. market. Some observers suggest corporate—as opposed to consumer—law is, in fact, de facto unregulated. Legal services outside the boundaries of lawyers’ traditional monopoly continue to multiply; some even flourish. For example, the legal staffing … of in-house corporate counsel.
– Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School[184]
The key is to change the broadest and most persistent problems within the legal system. The benefit of working and solving system-level challenges are shared and realized across the continuum of the public sphere.
So, how can this take place in today’s environment, in a legal system that often seems to oppose initiatives to improve? Many young lawyers entering the profession do so with enthusiasm to create positive change, but end up questioning how they can do that as they drown in student debt, and practice in a legal culture that is fixated on partnership profits and docketed hours and financial returns at almost any cost. The newest generation of legal, judicial, and academic leaders and influential lawyers will have to buck the practices and traditions that inhibit progress towards a future that creates value for both the legal profession and society. These leaders must redefine what success looks like for the legal profession, intentionally align their values with this broader mandate, and inspire other lawyers to join them.
Courageous lawyers and legal, judicial and academic leaders must work with their peers, the legal profession’s Regulators, and with civil society and government to ensure the legal profession acts in the best interest of the public.
Lawyers within the legal profession are privileged. In such a position there is an obligation that comes with that privilege, and that obligation and purpose is to share that knowledge, to put it to good use, to protect the public, and where necessary to help transform the legal profession and the legal system for the better when it is not working for the public – so that all may access and utilize affordable legal services when needed.
‘The widest gap in access to justice is for legal services for low-income and middle-income Americans, and I don’t know that allowing nonlawyers to co-own law firms and share fees is going to increase the availability of legal services to those groups’. … On the other hand, ‘if nonlawyers can be trained to provide routine legal services, they should be able to do so at a lower cost and that should increase access to justice’.
– American Bar Association[185]
http://countocram.com/2024/03/07/nptcancv79 Regulation, Not Prohibition – https://worthcompare.com/aagoqgwkx A Framework for Designing and Implementing Regulatory Reform
As can be seen, regulation is a complex phenomenon both conceptually and pragmatically, and the ethical and political stakes are high.[186] Of late, we are starting to see empirically based examinations of the state of the legal profession (a profession that fails to make its services widely available to the public), the regulatory barriers in place to the provision of affordable legal services, and its consequent impact on the ‘legal services gap’ and ‘access to justice crisis’.[187]
There is far too much law for those who can afford it and far too little for those who cannot.
– Derek Bok (Lawyer, Professor of Law, and former Dean of Harvard Law School, Solicitor-General of the United States, and President of Harvard University)[188]
The “central premise of regulatory reform is that the existing” lawyer-centric “rules governing delivery of legal services create high and often insurmountable barriers around the supply of legal services” to the public, “raising prices, stymieing innovation, and yielding a dysfunctional” legal “market that cannot optimally deliver legal services to those” members of the public “who need them”.
Although there are legitimate concerns about risks arising from alternative nonlawyer legal service providers, without evidential support, a blanket ban or significant restriction on nonlawyers by the legal profession in Canada and the U.S. is increasingly being seen as protectionism as opposed to balanced regulation in the public interest. And efforts to rethink the regulation of legal services are gaining momentum across states and provinces in the United States and Canada, fueled by the significant gap in affordable legal services available to the public, and growing evidence that the legal profession’s monopolistic regulatory barriers to nonlawyers – whether that be paralegals/paraprofessionals or technology – are at least partly to blame.[189]
The experience in the U.K. and Australia appear to show the advent of ABS has not caused the public more harm than the poorly regulated bar prior to 2007 and 1994 respectively. In some respects, may have jolted the legal professions to improvement of client care.
– Lee Kazaki, Past President Ontario Bar Association[190]
For policymakers/regulators in Canada and the U.S., the crucial challenge is to determine whether the continuation of anti-competitive restrictions are suitable for attaining its stated public interest goal, and not to go beyond what is necessary to achieve that objective. Numerous legal commentators and academics have sounded the alarm that the organized bar and self-regulated legal profession need to rethink the nature and provision of legal services to the public,[191] and the degree and extent to which the “lawyer only” or “lawyer-centric” regulatory model actually serves the public interest objective(s) today.[192] In particular, policymakers/regulators: [193]
- must be careful to ensure appropriate oversight and constraints of self-regulatory powers against self-interested and anti-competitive behaviour (i.e. economic interests that may be in conflict with fiduciary or ethical duty to regulate in the public interest).
- must be wary of the distorting effects of a conservative approach to certain legal principles (over others) that may inappropriately render the self-regulated legal professions of both Canada and the U.S. immune to competition laws.
- should enhance oversight by consulting with the applicable Competition Bureau and consumer advocacy groups when administering or surveying self-regulatory powers.
- must ensure that the design of regulation in the legal professional services space not ignore the importance of, and public interest in, maintaining competition that encourages affordable prices, better service offerings, and long-term innovation.
Law society elected bencher-managers are practicing lawyers first, and managers a poor second. They are still 19th century institutions, incapable of dealing with 21st century law society problems.
– Ken Chasse[194]
The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic.[195] Based on the UK, Australian, Utah and Arizona, and Ontario (among others) experience to date, it is clear that what is required for nonlawyer alternative legal services is appropriate regulation, but certainly not prohibition or severe limitation.[196]
And the possible regulatory reform and design space is much larger and more innovative than current experience suggests, as discussed in an interesting and thought-provoking Stanford Law publication – released earlier this year – entitled “A Framework for Designing and Implementing Regulatory Reform”:[197]
- Legal regulation has historically focused on barriers and limits. In fact, legal regulation could engender, facilitate, and even support entirely new mechanisms for the provision of legal services. For example, one might imagine an entity delivering legal services using a set of non-lawyers trained in specific services [i.e. paralegals, etc.], perhaps with lawyer oversight. Or one might envision a similar organization without any licensed lawyers involved that provides legal services solely through [legal technology] software driven by AI engines. Both possibilities would require entities to first analyze legal processes and break them down into small discrete steps with finite alternatives and to have the flexibility to determine which service mechanism is the most efficient to produce the required output and quality (“right-sourcing” the particular solution to the discrete legal or process need).
- There are multiple regulatory decision points and pathways to rethinking legal regulation. Two key design choices would include: regulatory goals; and regulatory focus.
- Regulatory Goals: Appropriate regulatory goals might include, for the purpose of this article, (1) increasing competition and efficiency in the market (e.g. decreasing cost or increasing supply), and (2) increasing access to legal services. These goals require an approach that increases competition, and through entity and role regulation, permit the types of nonlawyer roles/individuals and organizations currently restricted in the delivery of legal services to the public. Note: what should be clear from this article, is that “protecting the legal profession or lawyers’ business or careers is not an appropriate regulatory goal” – “if the priority is the protection of the profession, the project is not one of regulation but of professional association”.
- Regulatory Focus: The assumption that all or most legal services must be provided by lawyers is intertwined with self-regulation by the legal profession and its historical monopoly over the delivery of legal services to the public. A reconsideration of the regulation of legal services should start with a focus on “legal services” and not the “legal profession”. The regulatory question is then how to regulate the supply of legal services to the public to ensure the regulatory goals are met? Legal services can be delivered by (a) “individuals in occupations” (i.e. role regulation) and/or (b) “entities” (i.e. entity regulation).
- (a) Role Regulation: If a regulator oversees individuals in occupations, then one must decide which occupations are to be allowed and regulated. In role regulation, all regulatory and licensing requirements and functions are aimed squarely and entirely at roles. Only individual people can satisfy the licensing requirements. This is the historical approach to legal regulation in the U.S. and Canada and continues to be the dominant approach. Historically there was only one legal role: lawyers. Other regulated and licensed legal service roles – depending on the jurisdiction – may now include paralegals, notaries, navigator, and other paraprofessional roles.
- (b) Entity Regulation: Another (not mutually exclusive) approach to regulatory reform is to authorize and regulate legal service entities. Licensing and regulatory requirements are directed at the entity, the entity holds the license, and regulatory enforcement targets the entity. Entity regulation can take place alongside role regulation and regulated roles can work within regulated entities (think doctors working within a hospital or registered investment advisers working within banks). However, entity regulation does not itself require that services be provided by regulated roles. Regulating at the entity level theoretically permits more freedom and flexibility around service provision modality as long as the entity itself remains compliant with the regulatory requirements.
- Entities that provide legal services can be conveniently placed into one of three categories. Category One: traditional law firms, from a single practitioner up to a BigLaw large law firm. Category Two: non-traditional alternative legal service entities that employ traditional lawyers and/or other regulated roles in the provision of legal service (i.e. ABSs). They could be law firms that have partial nonlawyer ownership or management, law firms that share fees, revenue, or profits with nonlawyers, or law companies (such as Rocket Lawyer) that employ lawyers to practice law for their consumers. Category Three: non-traditional entities that do not employ traditional lawyers but provide legal services, through software or nonlawyers.
- Entity regulation has two potential advantages distinct from role regulation alone: (1) enabling beneficial role diversification, and (2) enabling technological innovation. If regulation is targeted not only at legal roles but at legal services entities, then those entities can devise the right sourcing of legal work across a variety of provider mechanisms, including technology, unlicensed nonlawyers, and licensed legal roles.
- An advantage of entity regulation is the ability to permit innovation with legal technology (in the software provision of legal practice services). Software provision of legal services may hold significant potential for increasing access to affordable legal services.
- Reform and rethinking of legal services regulation should be prepared to separate out the regulation of legal services from the role of the lawyer. An objective rethinking of legal services regulation in the “public interest” should start with a blank slate, and should build from the identified regulatory objective. And everything should be on the table.
Reform in respect to increased role regulation (to include nonlawyer paraprofessionals) and parallel entity regulation (to include public facing legal technology and ABSs) may well be fundamental for the legal profession to avoid a similar situation to that of the UK in which the government appointed a new separate independent regulatory body to oversee legal service providers (thereby breaking up the legal profession’s ‘guild-based’ system and ending self-regulation in that country[198]). Unfortunately, based on history, it appears unlikely the organized legal bar in Canada or the U.S. will easily accept “public interest” reform on their own.
The possible design space is much larger and more innovative than current experience suggests. Legal regulation has historically focused on barriers and limits. In fact, legal regulation could engender, facilitate, and even support entirely new mechanisms for the provision of legal services.
– A Framework for Designing and Implementing Regulatory Reform, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School (July 2022) https://www.jamesramsden.com/2024/03/07/06tipod3 [199]
Conclusion
The status quo is unsustainable. The public need affordable legal services, but in many cases that does not necessarily mean those legal services need to be delivered by lawyers.
To meet the needs and expectations of the public, and address the gap in affordable legal services and significant ‘access to justice crisis’, the legal profession and its regulators must recognize that the delivery of legal services can no longer be monopolized or restricted to a “lawyer-only” or “lawyer-centric” model. The legal profession and its lawyers and the traditional law firms can no longer be the sole “straw that stirs the drink”, and must recognize and accept they need to be but one feature – albeit an important one – in a required broadening of the public’s legal industry supply chain.
[M]eaningful change rarely comes easily, let alone when it requires a self-regulating profession to undertake self-sacrifice. But estimates suggest that inefficient policies and our professional regulations result in a roughly $10 billion annual ‘self-subsidy’, in the form of higher prices lawyers may charge their clients compared to what they could charge in a more competitive marketplace. Might not our willingness to confront candidly just how much of that self-subsidy is warranted prove a good test of our commitment to civil justice reform.
– Judicature[200]
The self-regulated legal profession in the U.S. and Canada may be fairly perceived by the public as both prefect and cheerleader, bar leaders who fail to tackle the profession’s issues in areas that may be seen to be in conflict with “protectionist instincts”. Bar leaders and lawyers who see and treat their regulators as defenders of the legal profession feed the erosion of public confidence in self-regulation.[201]
The history of the legal profession and self-regulation in the U.S. and Canada is a complex one. The profession has resisted change. When it does institute change, the change is usually directed not at the existing members of the profession, but at new entrants. In most cases, the change that has been implemented has been forced by the influences of government, culture, economics, and globalization—not by the profession itself. In short, outside of progressive jurisdictions such as the UK and Australia, the legal profession is generally ponderous, backward looking, and self-preserving – “it clings to the past and precedent and seeks only to protect, preserve, and maintain”.[202]
Protect, preserve, and maintain.
– James Moliterno, The Trouble with Lawyer Regulation.[203]
Regulatory reform in respect to the legal profession is one important piece of the puzzle to the complex access to justice problem. There are other system stakeholders who will need to be part of a more comprehensive and permanent solution, and this includes – among others – the government, the courts, and the legal education system and its accreditor.
There are promising signs of change as reform and innovation present unique opportunities to address the ‘access to justice crisis’. Technology, allied nonlawyer professionals, and expanded regulation show incredible promise in directly tackling the public’s unmet legal needs: expanding the scope and meaning of legal services; substantively broadening – and in some jurisdictions reinventing – how legal services are delivered; developing the range of roles and legal careers for paralegals and allied paraprofessionals, and extracting greater value from legal technology by aligning and integrating it with the delivery of legal services to the public.
Reform and an evolving legal service delivery model will be a substantive benefit to the public and broader society. Change will not come easily, but it will come. And the public, the legal profession, society and the rule of law will be better for it.
Eric Sigurdson
Order Tramadol American Express Endnotes:
[1] Beverley McLachlin, Canada’s Legal System at 150: Democracy and the Judiciary: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (At the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, Ontario), Supreme Court of Canada, June 3, 2016; Kirk Makin, Access to justice becoming a privilege of the rich, judge warns, Globe and Mail, February 10, 2011. Also see, Mark Cohen, Democratic Degradation Is Law’s Ultimate Disruptor, Forbes, August 17, 2022; Mark Cohen, Is the Legal Function Fiddling While the Rule of Law is Burning?, The Case for an Integrated Response, Forbes, April 11, 2022.
[2] Beverley McLachlin, Legal Profession in the 21st Century: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (2015 Canadian Bar Association Plenary), Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015. Also see, Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017; Trevor Farrow and Lesley Jacobs (Editors), The Justice Crisis: The Cost and Value of Accessing Law, UBC Press, 2020; R. Roy McMurty, Into the Future: Remarks by the Honourable R. Roy McMurty, Chief Justice of Ontario, Civil Justice Reform Conference, December 7, 2006 (“our civil justice system is in a crisis”).
[3] Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016. Also see, Justice Neil Gorsuch, Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, Judicature, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2016.
[4] Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016; Beverley McLachlin, Legal Profession in the 21st Century: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (2015 Canadian Bar Association Plenary), Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015; Justice Neil Gorsuch, Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, Judicature, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2016.
[5] Beverley McLachlin, Canada’s Legal System at 150: Democracy and the Judiciary: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (At the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, Ontario), Supreme Court of Canada, June 3, 2016; Kirk Makin, Access to justice becoming a privilege of the rich, judge warns, Globe and Mail, February 10, 2011. Also see, Mark Cohen, Democratic Degradation Is Law’s Ultimate Disruptor, Forbes, August 17, 2022; Mark Cohen, Is the Legal Function Fiddling While the Rule of Law is Burning?, The Case for an Integrated Response, Forbes, April 11, 2022.
[6] Mary E. Juetten, How can technology solve our access to justice crisis?, ABA Journal, September 8, 2017. Also see, Malcolm Mercer, Being in Favour of Reform, Just Not Change, Slaw, February 26, 2014 (“Should we care about the 85% of legal needs that are not addressed by lawyers? … The next question is why are lawyers used for less than 15% of legal needs?”); Dr. George Beaton, 10 reasons BigLaw managing partners are not sleeping very well, Beaton Capital, August 15, 2015 (Lawyers are increasingly unaffordable to most individuals: Statistics support the view that accessing the justice system with the help of a legal professional is increasingly unaffordable to most people. According to an American study from a few years ago, as much as 70%-90% of legal needs in society go unmet. Among the hardest hit are the middle class – who earn too much to qualify for legal aid, but frequently not enough to retain a lawyer for a matter of any complexity or length. Additionally, members of poor and vulnerable groups are particularly prone to legal problems. Increasingly, these needs are being addressed by providers outside the legal profession, including those within the early resolution services sector.); Beverley McLachlin, Legal Profession in the 21st Century: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (2015 Canadian Bar Association Plenary), Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015:
“Statistics support the view that accessing the justice system with the help of a legal professional is increasingly unaffordable to most people. Nearly 12 million Canadians will experience at least one legal problem in a given three-year period, yet few will have the resources to solve them. According to an American study from a few years ago, as much as 70%-90% of legal needs in society go unmet. We all know that unresolved legal problems adversely affect people’s lives and, ultimately, the public purse. Among the hardest hit are the middle class – who earn too much to qualify for legal aid, but frequently not enough to retain a lawyer for a matter of any complexity or length. Additionally, members of poor and vulnerable groups are particularly prone to legal problems, and legal problems tend to lead to problems of other types, such as health issues.”
[7] The Legal Profession in the 21st Century, Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C., Chief Justice of Canada, Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015. Also see, Editorial Board, Lawyers are fighting innovative proposals for more affordable legal assistance. That’s wrong, Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2022; Bob Tarantino, When even the attorney general can’t afford a lawyer, National Post, August 21, 2012; Jessica Prince and Rory Gillis, Lawyers are too expensive for most Canadians. Give more work to paralegals, Globe and Mail, November 5, 2013 (“as many as 65 per cent of individuals in family court proceedings do not have a lawyer… the rise in self-representation poses an existential challenge to our justice system.”); Laura Fraser, Middle-class injustice: Too wealthy for legal aid, too pinched for ‘average’ lawyers’ fees, CBC News, March 7, 2016 (“in Ontario Family Court, where 57 per cent of litigants did not even have a lawyer”).
[8] Beverley McLachlin, Canada’s Legal System at 150: Democracy and the Judiciary: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (At the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, Ontario), Supreme Court of Canada, June 3, 2016.
[9] Kirk Makin, Access to justice becoming a privilege of the rich, judge warns, Globe and Mail, February 10, 2011; Beverley McLachlin, Canada’s Legal System at 150: Democracy and the Judiciary: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (At the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, Ontario), Supreme Court of Canada, June 3, 2016; Mark Cohen, Democratic Degradation Is Law’s Ultimate Disruptor, Forbes, August 17, 2022; Mark Cohen, Is the Legal Function Fiddling While the Rule of Law is Burning?, The Case for an Integrated Response, Forbes, April 11, 2022.
[10] William McDowell and Usman Sheikh, A Lawyer’s Duty to Ensure Access to Justice, Advocates’ Society ‘Symposium on Professionalism’, January 2009.
[11] Jessica K. Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, and Alyx Mark, Judges and the Deregulation of the Lawyer’s Monopoly, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 89, 2021.
[12] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017. Also see, Mary E. Juetten, How can technology solve our access to justice crisis?, ABA Journal, September 8, 2017. Also see, Malcolm Mercer, Being in Favour of Reform, Just Not Change, Slaw, February 26, 2014 (“Should we care about the 85% of legal needs that are not addressed by lawyers? … The next question is why are lawyers used for less than 15% of legal needs?”); Jayne Reardon, Embrace a New Law Model to Better Serve Public and Lawyers, 2 Civility.org, November 29, 2016 (“Many studies over the last few decades reveal that an increasing segment of the population, primarily low and moderate income Americans, are not accessing legal services. For only one example, Deborah Rhode documents in her research that “[a]ccording to most estimates, about four-fifths of the civil legal needs of the poor, and two- to three-fifths of the needs of middle-income individuals, remain unmet.”); Dr. George Beaton, 10 reasons BigLaw managing partners are not sleeping very well, Beaton Capital, August 15, 2015 (Lawyers are increasingly unaffordable to most individuals: Statistics support the view that accessing the justice system with the help of a legal professional is increasingly unaffordable to most people. According to an American study from a few years ago, as much as 70%-90% of legal needs in society go unmet. Among the hardest hit are the middle class – who earn too much to qualify for legal aid, but frequently not enough to retain a lawyer for a matter of any complexity or length. Additionally, members of poor and vulnerable groups are particularly prone to legal problems. Increasingly, these needs are being addressed by providers outside the legal profession, including those within the early resolution services sector.); Beverley McLachlin, Legal Profession in the 21st Century: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (2015 Canadian Bar Association Plenary), Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015 (“According to an American study from a few years ago, as much as 70%-90% of legal needs in society go unmet”).
[13] Lisa Danielle Trabucco, The Regulation of Paralegals in Ontario: Increased Access to Justice?, PhD Dissertations, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Osgoode Digital Commons, 2021; Lisa Trabucco, What Are We Waiting For? It’s Time to Regulate Paralegals in Canada, Windsor Yearbook on Access to Justice, Vol. 35, 2018; Jessica Prince and Rory Gillis, Lawyers are too expensive for most Canadians. Give more work to paralegals, Globe and Mail, November 5, 2013 (“as many as 65 per cent of individuals in family court proceedings do not have a lawyer… the rise in self-representation poses an existential challenge to our justice system.”); Family Law Working Group (Law Society of Ontario), Family Legal Services Provider Licence: Consultation Paper, June 2020; Justice Annemarie E. Bonkalo, Family Legal Services Review. Report Submitted to Attorney General Yasir Naqvi and Treasurer Paul Schabas, December 31, 2016; Zachariah DeMeola and Michael Houlberg, To Close the Justice Gap, We Must Look Beyond Lawyers, Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, University of Denver, November 4, 2021; Adrian Macnab, Law Society votes to approve regulatory sandbox for innovative legal tech development, Law Times, April 22, 2021; Zena Olinjnyk, BC outlines intentions to create a single regulator governing lawyers, notaries, paralegals, Canadian Lawyer, September 22, 2022; Jacob Millar and Alyssa Hall, Regulation of the legal profession in Canada: overview, Thomson Reuters Practical Law, June 1, 2021 (“In some Canadian jurisdictions … Quebec and British Columbia allow notaries to do work reserved to lawyers in other provinces, such as real estate.”).
[14] Jessica K. Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, and Alyx Mark, Judges and the Deregulation of the Lawyer’s Monopoly, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 89, 2021. Also see, Ian Mulgrew, End lawyers’ monopoly, competition needed, says expert, Vancouver Sun, April 28, 2019; Gavin and Brooke MacKenzie, Should lawyers have a monopoly over the provision of legal services?, CBA National, Winter 2016:
“The alternative to ignoring the 88 per cent of the public’s needs that go unmet is to allow qualified non-lawyers to fill much of that huge gap. It makes no sense to prohibit anyone but a member of the Law Society from doing work that members of the Law Society don’t do.”
[15] Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016.
[16] Editorial Board, Lawyers are fighting innovative proposals for more affordable legal assistance. That’s wrong, Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2022.
[17] Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016.
[18] Beverley McLachlin, Legal Profession in the 21st Century: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (2015 Canadian Bar Association Plenary), Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015.
[19] Jessica K. Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, and Alyx Mark, Judges and the Deregulation of the Lawyer’s Monopoly, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 89, 2021. Also see, Ian Mulgrew, End lawyers’ monopoly, competition needed, says expert, Vancouver Sun, April 28, 2019.
[20] Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016. Also see, Gillian K. Hadfield, The Cost of Law: Promoting Access to Justice Through the (Un)Corporate Practice of Law, International Review of Law & Economics, Vol. 38, 2014. And see, Justice Constandinos Himonas and Vice Chief Justice Ann Scott, Reform the legal system to close the justice gap, Calmatters.org, November 9, 2021; Justice Neil Gorsuch, Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, Judicature, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2016.
[21] Jessica Prince and Rory Gillis, Lawyers are too expensive for most Canadians. Give more work to paralegals, Globe and Mail, November 5, 2013. Also see, David Freeman Engstrom, Rethinking the Regulation of Legal Services: What States Are Doing to Move the Needle on Access to Justice, Stanford Center on the Legal Profession (law.stanford.edu), May 18, 2022 (“Importantly, too, it isn’t just the poorest Americans who cannot afford our system. It’s nearly everyone.”); Mark Cohen, The Golden Age of the Legal Entrepreneur – Why Now and Why it Matters, Forbes, June 1, 2018 (“Lawyers controlled all facets of their market … and had a monopoly”).
[22] Zachariah DeMeola and Michael Houlberg, To Close the Justice Gap, We Must Look Beyond Lawyers, Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, University of Denver, November 4, 2021.
[23] Trevor Farrow and Lesley Jacobs (Editors), The Justice Crisis: The Cost and Value of Accessing Law, UBC Press, 2020; Mary McClymont, Nonlawyer Navigators in State Courts: An Emerging Consensus, Justice Law, Georgetown Law, 2019; Aidan Macnab, Increasing Access to justice requires ‘culture shift’ not just lower lawyer fees: new book, Law Times, September 3, 2020; Marcus Sixta, Innovation is Required to Address the Access to Justice Crisis, Slaw, March 3, 2022; Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016.
[24] See, Clayton Christensen, Michael Raynor, and Rory McDonald, What is Disruptive Innovation?, Harvard Business Review, December 2015.
[25] Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016. Also see, Gillian K. Hadfield, The Cost of Law: Promoting Access to Justice Through the (Un)Corporate Practice of Law, International Review of Law & Economics, Vol. 38, 2014. And see, Justice Constandinos Himonas and Vice Chief Justice Ann Scott, Reform the legal system to close the justice gap, Calmatters.org, November 9, 2021; Justice Neil Gorsuch, Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, Judicature, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2016; Jessica K. Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, and Alyx Mark, Judges and the Deregulation of the Lawyer’s Monopoly, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 89, 2021; Ian Mulgrew, End lawyers’ monopoly, competition needed, says expert, Vancouver Sun, April 28, 2019.
[26] Jessica K. Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, and Alyx Mark, Judges and the Deregulation of the Lawyer’s Monopoly, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 89, 2021; Ian Mulgrew, End lawyers’ monopoly, competition needed, says expert, Vancouver Sun, April 28, 2019.
[27] See generally, Thomas Clarke and Lucy Ricca, A Framework for Designing and Implementing Regulatory Reform, Law.Stanford.edu, July 2022; David Freeman Engstrom, Lucy Ricca, Graham Ambrose, and Maddie Walsh, Legal Innovation After Reform: Evidence from Regulatory Change, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School, September 2022; Ian Mulgrew, End lawyers’ monopoly, competition needed, says expert, Vancouver Sun, April 28, 2019. Also see: Jessica K. Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, and Alyx Mark, Judges and the Deregulation of the Lawyer’s Monopoly, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 89, 2021; Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016; Gavin and Brooke MacKenzie, Should lawyers have a monopoly over the provision of legal services?, CBA National, Winter 2016; Ann Macaulay, We must stop taking self-regulation for granted, National (CBA), March 15, 2019; Honourable Robert Bauman (Chief Justice of British Columbia), It’s the Economy, Stupid, NSRLP (National Self-Represented Litigants Project), May 29, 2019.
[28] Jordan Furlong, The Paradigm Shift of Regulatory Sandboxes, Slaw, December 17, 2020. Also see, Terry Davidson, Ian Burns, and John Schofield, Canada has mixed approach on regulating paralegals; greater acceptance needed: industry voices, Lawyers Daily, November 4, 2020; Elizabeth Raymer, Should you hire a lawyer or a paralegal?, Canadian Lawyer, September 3, 2021:
“Ontario, through its law society, began to regulate paralegals in 2007, but it remains the only province to have done so. The Law Society of British Columbia’s Innovation Sandbox accepts proposals from lawyers and other interested individuals, businesses and organizations, including for provision of services within a law firm by a paralegal without direct supervision by a lawyer.”
[29] See generally, Context: The Current Paradigm in Canada and Comparative Jurisdictions, Government of Canada (justice.gc.ca); Appendix: Canadian Regulatory Frameworks: Jurisdiction by Jurisdiction, Government of Canada (justice.gc.ca).
[30] Context: The Current Paradigm in Canada and Comparative Jurisdictions, Government of Canada (justice.gc.ca); Appendix: Canadian Regulatory Frameworks: Jurisdiction by Jurisdiction, Government of Canada (justice.gc.ca); Jordan Furlong, The Paradigm Shift of Regulatory Sandboxes, Slaw, December 17, 2020. Also see, Noel Semple, On a Slow Train to Nowhere: Paralegal Family Law Practice in Ontario, Slaw, August 11, 2022; Lisa Danielle Trabucco, The Regulation of Paralegals in Ontario: Increased Access to Justice?, PhD Dissertations, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Osgoode Digital Commons, 2021; GlobeNewswire, Ontario Access to Justice: The Law Society of Ontario will be challenged on whether it facilitates access to justice for Ontario’s most vulnerable people, Financial Post, May 4, 2022. Alternatively, see: Teresa Donnelly, Celebrating 15 years of regulation of Ontario’s paralegals, Gazette, Law Society of Ontario (lso.ca), May 17, 2022.
[31] Context: The Current Paradigm in Canada and Comparative Jurisdictions, Government of Canada (justice.gc.ca). Also see, Michell Perlmutter, ‘Legal Advice’ vs. ‘Legal Information’: Clearing up the Murky Water, Slaw, September 26, 2017; Lauren Sudeall, The Overreach of Limits on ‘Legal Advice’, Yale Law Journal, Vol. 131, 2021-2022 (January 3, 2022).
[32] Lauren Sudeall, The Overreach of Limits on ‘Legal Advice’, Yale Law Journal, Vol. 131, 2021-2022 (January 3, 2022).
[33] Jena McGill, Amy Salyzyn, Suzanne Bouclin, and Karen Galldin, Emerging Technological Solutions to Access to Justice Problems: Opportunities and Risks of Mobile and Web-based Apps, Knowledge Synthesis Report Submitted to: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, October 13, 2016. Also see, Jena McGill, Suzanne Bouclin, and Amy Salyzyn, Mobile and Web-based Legal Apps: Opportunities, Risks and Information Gaps, Canadian Journal of Law and Technology, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2017.
[34] See for example, Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[35] Ivan Mitchell Merrow and Madeleine Dusseault, Non-Lawyer Legal Services: An International Round-up, Juste (oba.org), June 16, 2017.
[36] Mark Cohen, Clients Need Legal Services But Not Necessarily Lawyers, Forbes, February 19, 2019. See generally, Adrian Macnab, Law Society votes to approve regulatory sandbox for innovative legal tech development, Law Times, April 22, 2021.
[37] Judith A. McMorrow, UK Alternative Business Structures for Legal Practice: Emerging Models and Lessons for the US, 47 Georgetown Journal of International Law 665, 2016.
[38] Beverley McLachlin, Canada’s Legal System at 150: Democracy and the Judiciary: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (At the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, Ontario), Supreme Court of Canada, June 3, 2016; Beverley McLachlin, Legal Profession in the 21st Century: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (2015 Canadian Bar Association Plenary), Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015; Kirk Makin, Access to justice becoming a privilege of the rich, judge warns, Globe and Mail, February 10, 2011; Mark Cohen, Democratic Degradation Is Law’s Ultimate Disruptor, Forbes, August 17, 2022; Mark Cohen, Is the Legal Function Fiddling While the Rule of Law is Burning?, The Case for an Integrated Response, Forbes, April 11, 2022.
[39] The legal profession’s regulators in the U.S. and Canada:
Malcolm Mercer, Unmet Legal Needs – the Challenge to Legal Practice and to Self-Regulation, Slaw, July 13, 2016:
“Canadian law societies are authorized by provincial legislatures to decide who can practice law and provide legal services. The substantial majority of the governors of the law societies are lawyers elected by lawyers. In Ontario, paralegal benchers are elected by regulated paralegals.
In England and Wales, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Bar Standards Board are the regulators. The majority of the governors of these regulators are not solicitors or barristers.
In the United States, the state courts are the regulators. While lawyers have an active role, the courts are the ultimate decision-makers. The American Bar Association plays an interesting role in the U.S. context. The ABA is not a regulator, rather is “the national representative of the legal profession”. As a voluntary bar association, the ABA is governed by its House of Delegates. The ABA promulgates its Model Code of Professional Responsibility which is the starting point for the rules adopted in most states. The ABA plays an important harmonizing role with respect to legal education and legal ethics.”
Benjamin Barton, The Lawyer’s Monopoly – What Goes and What Stays, 82 Fordham Law Review 3067, 2014:
“State supreme courts control lawyer regulation in all fifty states. … State supreme court inherent authority over lawyer regulation has been predictably advantageous to lawyers. …
Generally speaking, state supreme courts have not proven particularly interested in the nuts and bolts of lawyer regulation. As a result, they have either formally or informally delegated much of their regulatory authority to bar associations. For example, the ABA drafts the rules of professional responsibility in the first instance and, in unified bar states, the bar associations run most aspects of lawyer regulation.
Thus, American lawyers have a unique claim to self-regulation. All other professions, from doctors to hairdressers, are regulated in the first instance by state legislatures. Lawyers, by contrast, are regulated by other lawyers—the justices of their state supreme courts.”
[40] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[41] Robert Mysicka, Who Watches the Watchmen? The Role of the Self-Regulator, Commentary No. 416, C.D. Howe Institute, October 2014. Also see, Adam Dodek, Public Interest Regulation: Governance Reform at the Law Society of Ontario, Slaw, August 22, 2018; Self-Regulated Professions – Balancing Competition and Regulation Report, Competition Bureau.gc.ca, 2007; OECD Policy Roundtables: Competitive Restrictions in Legal Professions, OECD Competition Committee, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2007. Also see, Self-Regulated Professions – Balancing Competition and Regulation Report, Competition Bureau.gc.ca, 2007.
[42] Malcolm Mercer, Conflicted Regulation in the Public Interest, Slaw, August 28, 2017. Also see, Malcolm Mercer, Unmet Legal Needs – the Challenge to Legal Practice and to Self-Regulation, Slaw, July 13, 2016; Drew Hasselback, Why that proposal to let non-lawyers own Canadian law firms is probably toast, Financial Post, August 12, 2015.
[43] Malcolm Mercer, Unmet Legal Needs – the Challenge to Legal Practice and to Self-Regulation, Slaw, July 13, 2016.
[44] Deborah L. Rhode, Reforming American Legal Education and Legal Practice: Rethinking Licensing Structures and the Role of Nonlawyers in Delivering and Financing Legal Services, Legal Ethics, Volume 16, Part 2, 2013. See, Alternative Business Structures, Law Society of Upper Canada – lsuc.on.ca/ABS/. Also see, Laura Snyder, Modernizing Legal Services in Common Law Countries: Will the US be Left Behind?, Lexington Books, August 2017; Ken Chasse, Legal Advice Services Cannot be Automated by Alternative Business Structures, Slaw, October 9, 2014; Mark Cohen, Why US Legal Regulation Needs a British Makeover, Forbes, October 17, 2016; Mitch Kowalski, ABS in Ontario Killed by the Foul Stench of Protectionism, Slaw, September 28, 2015; Noel Semple, ABS: What horrors within?, CBA National, December 4, 2014; Stephen Mabey, Speaker’s Corner: OTLA’s ABS submission couches own interest as protecting the public, Law Times, March 2, 2015; Michael McKiernan, PI boutiques battle non-lawyer ownership: Alternative Business Structures back on agenda at LSUC, Law Times, August 14, 2017; David Gialanella, Avvo, LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer Declared Off-Limits, Law.com, June 22, 2017; George Conk, Avvo, Rocket Lawyer, LegalZoom Blocked by New Jersy Supreme Court Ethics Committees, Contemporary Professional Responsibility, June 22, 2017; Robert Ambrogi, Latest legal victory has LegalZoom poised for growth, ABA Journal, August 1, 2014 (ie. “In recent years, LegalZoom has faced lawsuits in eight states seeking to shut it down for violating state laws barring the unauthorized practice of law. But with a notable recent victory in South Carolina, and having fended off all but one of the other lawsuits, LegalZoom is anything but shutting down”); Karen Rubin, LegalZoom: unauthorized practice? Or new legal services model?, Lexology, August 14, 2014; Mary Juetten and Billie Tarascio, Technology and the Unauthorized Practice of Law, Law Technology Today, June 12, 2015; Caroline Brown, LegalZoom: Closing the Justice Gap or Unauthorized Practice of Law?, North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, May 2016; Neil Rose, The Foul Stench of Protectionism, Legal Futures, September 29, 2015.
[45] Lee Akazaki, How origins of ABS in U.K. and Australian Law differ from Canada, leeakazaki.com, 2014. Also see, Malcolm Mercer, Conflicted Regulation in the Public Interest, Slaw, August 28, 2017; Malcolm Mercer, Unmet Legal Needs – the Challenge to Legal Practice and to Self-Regulation, Slaw, July 13, 2016.
[46] For example: hourly billing at best leads to inefficient practices, at worst it rewards and incentivises inefficiency. The hourly billing model ensures, to some degree, a law firm’s financial interests are opposite of those of its clients. Working inefficiently means more money coming in on a given file.
[47] Deborah L. Rhode, Reforming American Legal Education and Legal Practice: Rethinking Licensing Structures and the Role of Nonlawyers in Delivering and Financing Legal Services, Legal Ethics, Volume 16, Part 2, 2013; CLOC Founder, Connie Brenton, on AI and Legal Sector Change, Artificial Lawyer, September 26, 2017; Laurel Rigertas, The Legal Profession’s Monopoly: Failing to Protect Consumers, 82 Fordham Law Review 2683, 2014; Nancy Moore, The Future of Law as a Profession, 20 Chapman Law Review 255, 2017; Benjamin Barton, The Lawyer’s Monopoly – What Goes and What Stays, 82 Fordham Law Review 3067, 2014.
[48] Malcolm Mercer, Unmet Legal Needs – the Challenge to Legal Practice and to Self-Regulation, Slaw, July 13, 2016; Alice Woolley, Bencher Elections – the Challenge to Self-Regulations Legitimacy, Slaw, April 30, 2015; Drew Hasselback, Why that proposal to let non-lawyers own Canadian law firms is probably toast, Financial Post, August 12, 2015; Cristin Schmitz, ABS issue dominating bencher vote, The Lawyers Weekly, April 17, 2015.
[49] Cristin Schmitz, ABS issue dominating bencher vote, The Lawyers Weekly, April 17, 2015; Adam Dodek, Public Interest Regulation: Governance Reform at the Law Society of Ontario, Slaw, August 22, 2018.
[50] Thom Harrison, What’s in a Name? – Facts and Fallacies in the LSUC Debate 2017, Politics, Law and Life.blogspot.ca, October 1, 2017.
[51] Malcolm Mercer, Conflicted Regulation in the Public Interest, Slaw, August 28, 2017.
[52] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017. Also see, Deborah L. Rhode, Reforming American Legal Education and Legal Practice: Rethinking Licensing Structures and the Role of Nonlawyers in Delivering and Financing Legal Services, Legal Ethics, Volume 16, Part 2, 2013; CLOC Founder, Connie Brenton, on AI and Legal Sector Change, Artificial Lawyer, September 26, 2017; Laurel Rigertas, The Legal Profession’s Monopoly: Failing to Protect Consumers, 82 Fordham Law Review 2683, 2014; Nancy Moore, The Future of Law as a Profession, 20 Chapman Law Review 255, 2017; Benjamin Barton, The Lawyer’s Monopoly – What Goes and What Stays, 82 Fordham Law Review 3067, 2014.
[53] James Moliterno, The Trouble with Lawyer Regulation, 62 Emory Law Journal 885, 2013. Also see, James E. Moliterno, The American Legal Profession in Crisis: Resistance and Responses to Change, Oxford University Press, 2013.
[54] James Moliterno, The Trouble with Lawyer Regulation, 62 Emory Law Journal 885, 2013. Also see, James E. Moliterno, The American Legal Profession in Crisis: Resistance and Responses to Change, Oxford University Press, 2013.
[55] Mai Nguyen, The untold history of the legal profession, Precedent, December 4, 2018. Also see, Philip Girard, Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life, University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2nd Edition, 2005; C. Ian Kyer, Lawyers, Families, and Businesses: The Shaping of a Bay Street Law Firm, Faskens 1863-1963, Irwin Law, 2013; New Study finds gender and racial bias endemic in legal profession, ABA (americanbar.org), September 6, 2018.
[56] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017. See, Matthew Longobardi, Unauthorized Practice of Law and Meaningful Access to the Courts: Is Law Too Important to be Left to Lawyers?, 35 Cardozo Law Review 2043, 2014.
[57] Thomas Clarke and Lucy Ricca, A Framework for Designing and Implementing Regulatory Reform, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School (Law.Stanford.edu), July 2022. Also see, Adam Dodek, Public Interest Regulation: Governance Reform at the Law Society of Ontario, Slaw, August 22, 2018; David Freeman Engstrom, Lucy Ricca, Graham Ambrose, and Maddie Walsh, Legal Innovation After Reform: Evidence from Regulatory Change, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School (Law.Stanford.edu), September 2022; Jessica K. Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, and Alyx Mark, Judges and the Deregulation of the Lawyer’s Monopoly, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 89, 2021; Malcolm Mercer, Conflicted Regulation in the Public Interest, Slaw, August 28, 2017; Ian Mulgrew, End lawyers’ monopoly, competition needed, says expert, Vancouver Sun, April 28, 2019; Noel Semple, On a Slow Train to Nowhere: Paralegal Family Law Practice in Ontario, Slaw, August 11, 2022; Gavin and Brooke MacKenzie, Should lawyers have a monopoly over the provision of legal services?, CBA National, Winter 2016; Ann Macaulay, We must stop taking self-regulation for granted, National (CBA), March 15, 2019; Honourable Robert Bauman (Chief Justice of British Columbia), It’s the Economy, Stupid, NSRLP (National Self-Represented Litigants Project), May 29, 2019.
[58] Gavin and Brooke MacKenzie, Should lawyers have a monopoly over the provision of legal services?, CBA National, Winter 2016; Mark Cohen, The Pond Seems Wider: The Regulator Gap Between UK and U.S. Legal Practice, Legal Mosaic, May 4, 2015. Also see, Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[59] Justice Neil Gorsuch, Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, Judicature, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2016.
[60] Related to this main concern are additional motivations such as the protection of the effective administration of justice, the fact that only lawyers are subject to special ethical regulations and a system of professional discipline, and a minimization of competitive practices among lawyers. See, Matthew Longobardi, Unauthorized Practice of Law and Meaningful Access to the Courts: Is Law Too Important to be Left to Lawyers?, 35 Cardozo Law Review 2043, 2014; Canadian Bar Association, Futures: Transforming the Delivery of Legal Services in Canada, August 2014; Beverley McLachlin, Legal Profession in the 21st Century: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (2015 Canadian Bar Association Plenary), Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015; Derek Denckla, Nonlawyers and the Unauthorized Practice of Law: An overview of the legal and ethical parameters, 67 Fordham Law Review 2581, 1999; Deborah L. Rhode, Policing the Professional Monopoly: A Constitutional and Empirical Analysis of Unauthorized Practice Prohibitions, 34 Stanford Law Review 1, 1981.
[61] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017. See, Neil Rickman and James Anderson, Innovations in the Provision of Legal Services in the United States: An Overview for Policymakers, Kauffman-Rand Institute for Entrepreneurship Public Policy, 2011. Also see, Laurel Terry, The European Commission Project Regarding Competition in Professional Services, 29 Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business 1, 2009; Mark Cohen, The Pond Seems Wider: The Regulator Gap Between UK and U.S. Legal Practice, Legal Mosaic, May 4, 2015; Honourable Wayne Martin (Chief Justice of Western Australia), The Future of Regulation the Legal Profession: Is the Profession Over Regulated?, Conference of Regulatory Officers (Perth, Western Australia), September 16, 2009; Honourable JJ. Spigelman, AC, Are Lawyers Lemons?: Competition Principles and Professional Regulation, 2003 ALJ 44; Paul Patton, Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Future of Self-Regulation—Canada between the United States and the English /Australian Experience, ABA Journal of the Professional Lawyer, 2008; Robert W. Gordon, Can Lawyers’ Professional Values Be Saved? Are They Worth Saving? cited in Chief Justice of Ontario Advisory Committee on Professionalism, Working Group on the Definition of Professionalism, Elements of Professionalism (October 2001); Robert W. Gordon, Portrait of a Profession in Paralysis, 54 Stan. L. Rev 1427 (2002); Robert W. Gordon, The Independence of Lawyers, 68 B.U. L. Rev. 1 (1988).
[62] Adam Dodek and Emily Alderson, Risk Regulation and the Legal Profession, Alberta Law Review, Vol. 55, Issue 3, 2018.
[63] Alice Woolley, Bencher Elections – the Challenge to Self-Regulations Legitimacy, Slaw, April 30, 2015.
[64] Mark Cohen, Goodbye Guild – Law’s Changing Culture, Forbes, July 3, 2017. Also see, Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017; Benjamin H. Barton and Stephanos Bibas, Rebooting Justice: More Technology, Fewer Lawyers and the Future of Law, Encounter Books, 2017; Deborah L. Rhode, Policing the Professional Monopoly: A Constitutional and Empirical Analysis of Unauthorized Practice Prohibitions, 34 Stanford Law Review 1 , 1981 (stating that if enforcement of UPL rules are in the public’s interest “the public has remained curiously unsupportive of the war effort”); Matthew Longobardi, Unauthorized Practice of Law and Meaningful Access to the Courts: Is Law Too Important to be Left to Lawyers?, 35 Cardozo Law Review 2043, 2014; Laurel A. Rigertas, The Legal Profession’s Monopoly: Failing to Protect Consumers, 82 Fordham Law Review 2683, 2014; Judith A. McMorrow, UK Alternative Business Structures for Legal Practice: Emerging Models and Lessons for the US, 47 Georgetown Journal of International Law 665, 2016; Mary Jutten, Technology and the Unauthorized Practice of Law, Law Technology Today, June 12, 2015; Malcolm Mercer, Utopia, Dystopia and Alternative Business Structures, Slaw, November 11, 2013:
“[P]rotectionism … is rarely, if ever, expressly stated. Lawyers, like everyone else, fear change that could adversely affect them. This fear of adverse consequences of course gets dressed up as something else; sometimes consciously and sometimes not.”
[65] Jonathan Knee, Review: In ‘Rebooting Justice’, a Call to Help the Lawyerless in Court, New York Times, July 31, 2017. Also see, Benjamin H. Barton and Stephanos Bibas, Rebooting Justice: More Technology, Fewer Lawyers and the Future of Law, Encounter Books, 2017.
[66] Mary Jutten, Technology and the Unauthorized Practice of Law, Law Technology Today, June 12, 2015. For example see, Gabrielle Orum Hernandez, The DoNotPay Dilemma: Can Chatbots Provide Access to Justice Without a Lawyer?, Law.com, July 17, 2017; David Gialanella, Avvo, LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer Declared Off-Limits, Law.com, June 22, 2017; George Conk, Avvo, Rocket Lawyer, LegalZoom Blocked by New Jersy Supreme Court Ethics Committees, Contemporary Professional Responsibility, June 22, 2017; Robert Ambrogi, Latest legal victory has LegalZoom poised for growth, ABA Journal, August 1, 2014; Karen Rubin, LegalZoom: unauthorized practice? Or new legal services model?, Lexology, August 14, 2014; Mary Juetten and Billie Tarascio, Technology and the Unauthorized Practice of Law, Law Technology Today, June 12, 2015; Caroline Brown, LegalZoom: Closing the Justice Gap or Unauthorized Practice of Law?, North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, May 2016; Neil Rose, The Foul Stench of Protectionism, Legal Futures, September 29, 2015. Also see, Judith A. McMorrow, UK Alternative Business Structures for Legal Practice: Emerging Models and Lessons for the US, 47 Georgetown Journal of International Law 665, 2016; Neil Rose, Here come the Americans: LegalZoom gains ABS licence, Legal Futures.co.uk, January 7, 2015; Aron Solomon and Jason Moyse, Let the robots help the public, Canadian Lawyer, September 5, 2016.
[67] Jonathan Knee, Review: In ‘Rebooting Justice’, a Call to Help the Lawyerless in Court, New York Times, July 31, 2017. Also see, Benjamin H. Barton and Stephanos Bibas, Rebooting Justice: More Technology, Fewer Lawyers and the Future of Law, Encounter Books, 2017; Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[68] Robert Mysicka, Who Watches the Watchmen? The Role of the Self-Regulator, Commentary No. 416, C.D. Howe Institute, October 2014.
[69] Canadian Bar Association, Futures: Transforming the Delivery of Legal Services in Canada, August 2014; Beverley McLachlin, Legal Profession in the 21st Century: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (2015 Canadian Bar Association Plenary), Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015; Derek Denckla, Nonlawyers and the Unauthorized Practice of Law: An overview of the legal and ethical parameters, 67 Fordham Law Review 2581, 1999.
[70] Related to this main concern are additional motivations such as the protection of the effective administration of justice, the fact that only lawyers are subject to special ethical regulations and a system of professional discipline, and a minimization of competitive practices among lawyers.
[71] Matthew Longobardi, Unauthorized Practice of Law and Meaningful Access to the Courts: Is Law Too Important to be Left to Lawyers?, 35 Cardozo Law Review 2043, 2014; Deborah L. Rhode, Policing the Professional Monopoly: A Constitutional and Empirical Analysis of Unauthorized Practice Prohibitions, 34 Stanford Law Review 1, 1981. Also see, Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[72] Richard Devlin and Porter Heffernan, The End(s) of Self Regulation?, Alberta Law Review, Vol. 45, No. 5, 2008.
[73] Justice Neil Gorsuch, Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, Judicature, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2016. Also see, Richard Moorhead, Avrom Sherr & Alan Paterson, Contesting Professionalism: Legal Aid and Nonlawyers in England and Wales, Law & Society Review, Vol. 37, No. 4, 2003; Deborah Rhode, Too Much Law, Too Little Justice: Too Much Rhetoric, Too Little Reform, Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Vol. 11, 1998.
[74] Hon. Deno G. HImonas and Tyler J. Hubbard, Democratizing the Rule of Law, Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, Vol. XVI, 2020.
[75] Jena McGill, Amy Salyzyn, Suzanne Bouclin, and Karen Galldin, Emerging Technological Solutions to Access to Justice Problems: Opportunities and Risks of Mobile and Web-based Apps, Knowledge Synthesis Report Submitted to: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, October 13, 2016. Also see, Jena McGill, Suzanne Bouclin, and Amy Salyzyn, Mobile and Web-based Legal Apps: Opportunities, Risks and Information Gaps, Canadian Journal of Law and Technology, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2017.
[76] Jena McGill, Suzanne Bouclin, and Amy Salyzyn, Mobile and Web-based Legal Apps: Opportunities, Risks and Information Gaps, Canadian Journal of Law and Technology, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2017. Also see, Jena McGill, Amy Salyzyn, Suzanne Bouclin, and Karen Galldin, Emerging Technological Solutions to Access to Justice Problems: Opportunities and Risks of Mobile and Web-based Apps, Knowledge Synthesis Report Submitted to: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, October 13, 2016.
[77] Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016.
[78] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017. See, Derek Denckla, Nonlawyers and the Unauthorized Practice of Law: An overview of the legal and ethical parameters, 67 Fordham Law Review 2581, 1999.
[79] Derek Denckla, Nonlawyers and the Unauthorized Practice of Law: An overview of the legal and ethical parameters, 67 Fordham Law Review 2581, 1999.
[80] Deborah L. Rhode, Policing the Professional Monopoly: A Constitutional and Empirical Analysis of Unauthorized Practice Prohibitions, 34 Stanford Law Review 1, 1981 (stating that if enforcement of UPL rules are in the public’s interest “the public has remained curiously unsupportive of the war effort”). Also see, Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[81] Beverley McLachlin, Legal Profession in the 21st Century: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (2015 Canadian Bar Association Plenary), Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015. Also see, Bob Goodman and Josh Harder, Four Areas of Legal Ripe for disruption by Smart Startups, Law Technology Today, December 16, 2014.
[82] Jessica K. Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, and Alyx Mark, Judges and the Deregulation of the Lawyer’s Monopoly, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 89, 2021.
[83] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[84] Justice Neil Gorsuch, Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, Judicature, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2016.
[85] Jayne R. Reardon, Alternative Business Structures: Good for the Public, Good for the Lawyers, 7:2 St. Mary’s Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics 304, 2017.
[86] Mary Jutten, Technology and the Unauthorized Practice of Law, Law Technology Today, June 12, 2015.
[87] Mark Cohen, Democratic Degradation Is Law’s Ultimate Disruptor, Forbes, August 17, 2022. Also see,
[88] Robert Gordon, Lawyers, the Legal Profession & Access to Justice in the United States: A Brief History, Judicature, Vol. 103, No. 3, 2019.
[89] David Freeman Engstrom, Rethinking the Regulation of Legal Services: What States Are Doing to Move the Needle on Access to Justice, Stanford Center on the Legal Profession (law.stanford.edu), May 18, 2022.
[90] The legal profession is unhealthy – literally and figuratively. It suffers from high rates of suicide, chemical and alcohol dependency, divorce, and depression. See: Mark Cohen, Is the Legal Function Fiddling While the Rule of Law is Burning? The Case for an Integrated Response, Forbes, April 11, 2022. Also see, Scott Merrill, Legal field has high rates of substance use, mental illness, Concord Monitor, July 19, 2021; Eric Sigurdson, A Crisis of Stress: The Legal Profession’s Struggle for Peace of Mind – Purpose, Balance, and Self-Awareness, Sigurdson Post, October 30, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, The Legal Culture: Chronic Stress, Mental Illness and Addiction – Law Firms, Legal Departments, and Eight Organizational Strategies to reduce Burnout and promote Engagement, November 19, 2017; Eric Sigurdson, Epidemic in the Legal Profession (Part I) – Stress, Anxiety and Depression, Sigurdson Post, August 8, 2016; Eric Sigurdson, Epidemic in the Legal Profession (Part II) – Coping with Stress and Anxiety: stress management and the ‘mindful lawyer’, Sigurdson Post, August 17, 2016.
[91] Beverley McLachlin, Canada’s Legal System at 150: Democracy and the Judiciary: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (At the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, Ontario), Supreme Court of Canada, June 3, 2016; Kirk Makin, Access to justice becoming a privilege of the rich, judge warns, Globe and Mail, February 10, 2011; Mark Cohen, Democratic Degradation Is Law’s Ultimate Disruptor, Forbes, August 17, 2022; Mark Cohen, Is the Legal Function Fiddling While the Rule of Law is Burning?, The Case for an Integrated Response, Forbes, April 11, 2022; David Freeman Engstrom, Rethinking the Regulation of Legal Services: What States Are Doing to Move the Needle on Access to Justice, Stanford Center on the Legal Profession (law.stanford.edu), May 18, 2022; Lord Neuberger, Access to Justice: Welcome address to Australian Bar Association Biennial Conference, Remarks of Lord Neuberger, President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, London, UK, July 2017; Asher Flynn and Jacqueline Hodgson (Editors), Access to Justice and Legal Aid: Comparative Perspectives on Unmet Legal Need, Hart Publishing, 2019; Iris Benohr, EU Consumer Law and Human Rights, Oxford University Press, 2014; Andrej Auersperger, Just Words: The Effectiveness of Civil Justice in European Human Rights Jurisprudence, Cambridge University Press, 2020; Equal Access to Justice for Inclusive Growth: Putting People at the Centre, OECD Publishing, 2019. Also see, How Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts: Lawsuit trends highlight need to modernize civil legal systems, The Pew Charitable Trusts, May 2020; Editorial Board, Lawyers are fighting innovative proposals for more affordable legal assistance. That’s wrong, Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2022; Noel Semple, The Cost of Seeking Civil Justice in Canada, Canadian Bar Review, Vol. 93, Issue 3, 2016;
[92] Mark Cohen, Democratic Degradation Is Law’s Ultimate Disruptor, Forbes, August 17, 2022. Also see, Niall McCarthy, America’s Most & Least Trusted Professions, Forbes, January 11, 2019; Confidence in Institutions, Gallup Historical Trends, 2022; Jeffrey Jones, Confidence in U.S. Institutions Down; Average at New Low, Gallup, July 5, 2022; World Justice Project: Rule of Law Index (worldjusticeproject.org), #7 Civil Justice (“accessible and affordable”) – United States global ranking 41/139; Canada global ranking 22/139; Jena McGill, Amy Salyzyn, Suzanne Bouclin, and Karen Galldin, Emerging Technological Solutions to Access to Justice Problems: Opportunities and Risks of Mobile and Web-based Apps, Knowledge Synthesis Report Submitted to: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, October 13, 2016; Jena McGill, Suzanne Bouclin, and Amy Salyzyn, Mobile and Web-based Legal Apps: Opportunities, Risks and Information Gaps, Canadian Journal of Law and Technology, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2017.
[93] Study on Access to the Justice System – Legal Aid, Canadian Bar Association ‘Access to Justice Committee’, December 2016. Also see, Monidipa Fouzder, Labour Conference: Society renews legal aid plea, Law Gazette (lawgazette.co.uk), September 26, 2022.
[94] Tevor Farrow, Ab Currie, Nicole Aylwin, Les Jacobs, David Notrhrup, and Lisa Moore, Everyday Legal Problems and the Cost of Justice in Canada: Overview Report, Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, 2016.
[95] Adrian Vermeule, Supreme Court Justices Have Forgotten What the Law is For, New York Times, February 3, 2022.
[96] The Legal Profession in the 21st Century, Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C., Chief Justice of Canada, Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015.
[97] William McDowell and Usman Sheikh, A Lawyer’s Duty to Ensure Access to Justice, Advocates’ Society ‘Symposium on Professionalism’, January 2009; Olivia Stefanovich, ‘We’re in trouble’: Advocates urge Ottawa to help close the access-to-justice gap, CBC News, April 18, 2021; Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016; Beverley McLachlin, Legal Profession in the 21st Century: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (2015 Canadian Bar Association Plenary), Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015; Justice Neil Gorsuch, Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, Judicature, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2016.
[98] Kirk Makin, Access to justice becoming a privilege of the rich, judge warns, Globe and Mail, February 10, 2011.
[99] The Legal Profession in the 21st Century, Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C., Chief Justice of Canada, Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015. Also see, Editorial Board, Lawyers are fighting innovative proposals for more affordable legal assistance. That’s wrong, Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2022; Bob Tarantino, When even the attorney general can’t afford a lawyer, National Post, August 21, 2012; Jessica Prince and Rory Gillis, Lawyers are too expensive for most Canadians. Give more work to paralegals, Globe and Mail, November 5, 2013 (“as many as 65 per cent of individuals in family court proceedings do not have a lawyer… the rise in self-representation poses an existential challenge to our justice system.”); Laura Fraser, Middle-class injustice: Too wealthy for legal aid, too pinched for ‘average’ lawyers’ fees, CBC News, March 7, 2016 (“in Ontario Family Court, where 57 per cent of litigants did not even have a lawyer”); The Justice Gap: The Unmet Civil Legal Needs of Low-income Americans, Legal Services Corporation, April 2022. Also see, David Freeman Engstrom, Lucy Ricca, Graham Ambrose, and Maddie Walsh, Legal Innovation After Reform: Evidence from Regulatory Change, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School (Law.Stanford.edu), September 2022.
[100] William McDowell and Usman Sheikh, A Lawyer’s Duty to Ensure Access to Justice, Advocates’ Society ‘Symposium on Professionalism’, January 2009; Olivia Stefanovich, ‘We’re in trouble’: Advocates urge Ottawa to help close the access-to-justice gap, CBC News, April 18, 2021. Also see, Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016; Beverley McLachlin, Legal Profession in the 21st Century: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (2015 Canadian Bar Association Plenary), Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015; Justice Neil Gorsuch, Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, Judicature, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2016. Also see, David Freeman Engstrom, Lucy Ricca, Graham Ambrose, and Maddie Walsh, Legal Innovation After Reform: Evidence from Regulatory Change, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School (Law.Stanford.edu), September 2022.
[101] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017. Also see, Mary E. Juetten, How can technology solve our access to justice crisis?, ABA Journal, September 8, 2017. Also see, Malcolm Mercer, Being in Favour of Reform, Just Not Change, Slaw, February 26, 2014 (“Should we care about the 85% of legal needs that are not addressed by lawyers? … The next question is why are lawyers used for less than 15% of legal needs?”); Jayne Reardon, Embrace a New Law Model to Better Serve Public and Lawyers, 2 Civility.org, November 29, 2016 (“Many studies over the last few decades reveal that an increasing segment of the population, primarily low and moderate income Americans, are not accessing legal services. For only one example, Deborah Rhode documents in her research that “[a]ccording to most estimates, about four-fifths of the civil legal needs of the poor, and two- to three-fifths of the needs of middle-income individuals, remain unmet.”); Dr. George Beaton, 10 reasons BigLaw managing partners are not sleeping very well, Beaton Capital, August 15, 2015 (Lawyers are increasingly unaffordable to most individuals: Statistics support the view that accessing the justice system with the help of a legal professional is increasingly unaffordable to most people. According to an American study from a few years ago, as much as 70%-90% of legal needs in society go unmet. Among the hardest hit are the middle class – who earn too much to qualify for legal aid, but frequently not enough to retain a lawyer for a matter of any complexity or length. Additionally, members of poor and vulnerable groups are particularly prone to legal problems. Increasingly, these needs are being addressed by providers outside the legal profession, including those within the early resolution services sector.); Beverley McLachlin, Legal Profession in the 21st Century: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (2015 Canadian Bar Association Plenary), Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015 (“According to an American study from a few years ago, as much as 70%-90% of legal needs in society go unmet”).
[102] William McDowell and Usman Sheikh, A Lawyer’s Duty to Ensure Access to Justice, Advocates’ Society ‘Symposium on Professionalism’, January 2009.
[103] Jill Dessalines, Adapt or Die: Why Law Firms Must Change to Survive in Tomorrow’s Economy, Linkedin.com, March 6, 2017.
[104] 6 in 10 Americans don’t have $500 in savings, CBS 19 News, January 12, 2022; Lorie Konish, Just 39% of Americans could pay for a $1,000 emergency expense, CNBC, January 11, 2022.
[105] Are we thriving or merely surviving? New CPA Canada study examines the state of Canadians’ finances in today’s turbulent times, CPA Canada, August 4, 2022.
[106] Jessica Dickler, Nearly half of all Americans are falling deeper in debt as inflation continues to boost costs, CNBC, July 26, 2022; Alicja Siekierska, Nearly half of Canadians on the brink of insolvency: MNP survey, Yahoo Finance, October 3, 2022; Pattie Lovett-Reid, 53% of Canadians on the brink of insolvency: MNP survey, BNN Bloomberg, April 8, 2021.
[107] Rich Cohen, The Ballad of Downward Mobility, The Atlantic, August 28, 2022.
[108] Bernie Sanders, The US has a ruling class – and Americans must stand up to it, The Guardian, September 2, 2022; Drew Desilver, For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades, Pew Research Center, August 7, 2018; Greg Daugherty, History of the Cost of Living, Investopedia, May 29, 2022. Also see, Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Ruth Igielnik, and Rakesh Kochhar, Trends in Income and Wealth Inequality: Most Americans Say There Is Too Much Economic Inequality in the U.S., But Fewer Than Half Call it a Top Priority, Pew Research Center, January 9, 2020; Anshu Siripurapu, The U.S. Inequality Debate, Council on Foreign Relations, April 20, 2022; Nick Hanauer and David Rolf, The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% – and That’s Made the U.S. Less Secure, Time, September 14, 2020.
[109] Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), OECD Publishing, 2019. Also see, Sarah Burkinshaw, Yaz Terajima, and Carolyn Wilkins, Income Inequality in Canada, Bank of Canada, July 26, 2022; Livio Di Matteo, Wealth Inequality: A Long-Term View, Finances of Nation, July 28, 2020; Lars Osberg, The Age of Increasing Inequality: The Astonishing Rise of Canada’s 1%, Lorimer, 2018; The Ultra-Rich Prosper and the Rest of the World Becomes Poorer, Oxfam, January 14, 2022; Olivier Blanchard and Dani Rodrik (editors), Combatting Inequality: Rethinking Government’s Role, The MIT Press, 2021; W. Craig Riddell, France St-Hilaire, and David Green, Income Inequality: The Canadian Story, McGill-Queens University Press, 2016; Haves and Have-Notes – Deep and Persistent Wealth Inequality in Canada, Broadbent Institute, September 2014; Eyal Press, To Understand Inequality, Look to the 9.9 Percent, New York Times, November 18, 2021; Confronting the growing retirement gap: The financial services industry’s role in securing Canadians’ futures, Deloitte, August 2022.
[110] Monidipa Fouzder, Labour Conference: Society renews legal aid plea, Law Gazette (lawgazette.co.uk), September 26, 2022.
[111] Eric Sigurdson, Future-Ready Mindsets to Succeed in the New Legal Economy – an introduction for lawyers and legal leaders, Sigurdson Post, January 31, 2020.
[112] Mark Cohen, Is the Legal Function Fiddling While the Rule of Law is Burning? The Case for an Integrated Response, Forbes, April 11, 2022. Also see, Stephanie Francis Ward, New Findings published on law school debt, ABA Journal, September 21, 2021; Jordan Furlong, Why competence-based licensure would make the law degree unnecessary, Law Twenty One (law21.ca), October 5, 2022 (“As of 2018, the average Canadian law student graduated with $71,000 in debt. In 2022, the average American law student graduated with $165,000 in debt”).
[113] Anna Marra, Shaping the 21st-century lawyer, IE Law Hub, LawAhead, 2022; Peter Connor, The shape of lawyers in the future – T, O, or Delta?, Legal Business World, September 23, 2020; Natalie Runyon, Delta Model Update: The Most Important Area of Lawyer Competency – Personal Effectiveness Skills, Thomson Reuters, March 21, 2019; Natalie Runyon, Alyson Carrel, Cat Moon, Shellie Reid, and Gabe Teninbaum, The Delta Model: simple, accurate, versatile, Legal Evolution (Bill Henderson, Editor), November 10, 2019.
[114] Erica Alini, Starting out as a young adult is incredibly expensive in 2022. We crunched the numbers, Globe and Mail, September 30, 2022.
[115] Caitlan ‘Cat’ Moon, Delta Model Lawyer: Lawyer Competencies for the Computational Age, Law.MIT.edu, December 6, 2019. Also see, Alyson Carrel, Legal Intelligence Through Artificial Intelligence Requires Emotional Intelligence: A New Competency Model for the 21st Century Legal Professional, Georgia State University Law Review, Vol. 35, Issue 4, 2019.
[116] Mark Cohen, Is the Legal Function Fiddling While the Rule of Law is Burning? The Case for an Integrated Response, Forbes, April 11, 2022. Also see, Mark Cohen, Digital Litigation: Dispute Avoidance, Early-Detection, Accelerated Case Strategy, and Early-Resolution, Forbes, April 19, 2021; The Legal Profession in the 21st Century, Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C., Chief Justice of Canada, Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015.
[117] Mark Cohen, Is the Legal Function Fiddling While the Rule of Law is Burning? The Case for an Integrated Response, Forbes, April 11, 2022. Also see, Just the Facts: Trends in Pro Se Civil Litigation from 2000 to 2019, United States Courts (uscourts.gov), February 11, 2021; Mark Cohen, Law is a Profession and an Industry – It Should be Regulated That Way, Forbes, March 29, 2018; Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017; Annabel Oromoni, Law Associations oppose LSO proposal allowing paralegals to provide family law services, Law Times, February 14, 2022.
[118] Jess Bravin, Justice Gorsuch Said Findings of Probe Into Leaked Roe Draft Opinion Will Be Made in Report, Wall Street Journal, September 8, 2022.
[119] Justice Neil Gorsuch, Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, Judicature, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2016.
[120] The Legal Profession in the 21st Century, Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C., Chief Justice of Canada, Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015.
[121] Robert Mysicka, Who Watches the Watchmen? The Role of the Self-Regulator, Commentary No. 416, C.D. Howe Institute, October 2014. Also see, Derek Denckla, Nonlawyers and the Unauthorized Practice of Law: An overview of the legal and ethical parameters, 67 Fordham Law Review 2581, 1999; OECD Policy Roundtables: Competitive Restrictions in Legal Professions, OECD Competition Committee, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2007. Also see, Self-Regulated Professions – Balancing Competition and Regulation Report, Competition Bureau.gc.ca, 2007.
[122] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[123] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017. See, Robert Mysicka, Who Watches the Watchmen? The Role of the Self-Regulator, Commentary No. 416, C.D. Howe Institute, October 2014. Also see, Self-Regulated Professions – Balancing Competition and Regulation Report, Competition Bureau.gc.ca, 2007; OECD Policy Roundtables: Competitive Restrictions in Legal Professions, OECD Competition Committee, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2007. Also see, Self-Regulated Professions – Balancing Competition and Regulation Report, Competition Bureau.gc.ca, 2007.
[124] How Regulation Is – and Isn’t – Changing Legal Services: Broad agreement exists that regulatory change in the law is needed, Disruptive Innovation in Legal Services, (The Practice, Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School), Vol. 1, Issue 2, January-February 2015.
[125] How Regulation Is – and Isn’t – Changing Legal Services: Broad agreement exists that regulatory change in the law is needed, Disruptive Innovation in Legal Services, (The Practice, Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School), Vol. 1, Issue 2, January-February 2015.
[126] Lisa Danielle Trabucco, The Regulation of Paralegals in Ontario: Increased Access to Justice?, PhD Dissertations, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Osgoode Digital Commons, 2021; Lisa Trabucco, What Are We Waiting For? It’s Time to Regulate Paralegals in Canada, Windsor Yearbook on Access to Justice, Vol. 35, 2018; Jessica Prince and Rory Gillis, Lawyers are too expensive for most Canadians. Give more work to paralegals, Globe and Mail, November 5, 2013 (“as many as 65 per cent of individuals in family court proceedings do not have a lawyer… the rise in self-representation poses an existential challenge to our justice system.”); Family Law Working Group (Law Society of Ontario), Family Legal Services Provider Licence: Consultation Paper, June 2020; Justice Annemarie E. Bonkalo, Family Legal Services Review. Report Submitted to Attorney General Yasir Naqvi and Treasurer Paul Schabas, December 31, 2016; Zachariah DeMeola and Michael Houlberg, To Close the Justice Gap, We Must Look Beyond Lawyers, Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, University of Denver, November 4, 2021.
[127] How Regulation Is – and Isn’t – Changing Legal Services: Broad agreement exists that regulatory change in the law is needed, Disruptive Innovation in Legal Services, (The Practice, Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School), Vol. 1, Issue 2, January-February 2015.
[128] David Wilkins and Maria Jose Esteban Ferrer, Taking the ‘Alternative’ out of Alternative Legal Service Providers, Alternative Legal Service Providers, (The Practice, Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School), Vol. 5, Issue 5, July-August 2019.
[129] Kai Jacob, Dierk Schindler, Roger Strathausen (editors), Liquid Legal: Transforming Legal into a Business Savvy, Information Enabled and Performance Driven Industry, Springer International Publishing, 2017; Richard Susskind, The End of Lawyers: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services, Oxford University Press, 2008; Richard Susskind, Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to your Future, Oxford University Press, 2013; Mark Cohen, Postcards from Europe; Part 1: London, Forbes, October 9, 2017; Forces of change in legal marketplace too powerful for Magic Circle to avoid, Global Legal Post, October 11, 2017.
[130] The Case Against Clones, The Economist, February 2, 2013.
[131] Clifford Winston, Robert Crandall, Vikram Maheshri, First Thing We Do, Let’s Deregulate All the Lawyers, Brookings Institution Press, 2011; Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[132] Judith A. McMorrow, UK Alternative Business Structures for Legal Practice: Emerging Models and Lessons for the US, 47 Georgetown Journal of International Law 665, 2016.
Also see for example only: Victor Li, Avvo, LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer CEOs say their products help bridge access-to-justice gap, ABA Journal, March 17, 2017 (“While all three CEOs have frequently faced questions about regulations governing the unauthorized practice of law, the trio did not use the Techshow stage to rage about the issue, or about regulations in general”); Richard Granat, North Carolina Restricts the Distribution of Legal Self-Help Software to Consumers, eLawyering Blog, July 12, 2016; Joan Rogers, N.C. Law Regulates LegalZoom, Other Legal Doc Providers, Bloomberg Law, July 26, 2016; Robert Amrogi, Latest legal victory has LegalZoom poised for growth, ABA Journal, August 1, 2014; George Leef, Why the Legal Profession Says LegalZoom is Illegal, Forbes, October 14, 2014; Mary Jutten, Technology and the Unauthorized Practice of Law, Law Technology Today, June 12, 2015; Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[133] Ian Mulgrew, End lawyers’ monopoly, competition needed, says expert, Vancouver Sun, April 28, 2019. Also see: Jessica K. Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, and Alyx Mark, Judges and the Deregulation of the Lawyer’s Monopoly, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 89, 2021; Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016; Gavin and Brooke MacKenzie, Should lawyers have a monopoly over the provision of legal services?, CBA National, Winter 2016; Ann Macaulay, We must stop taking self-regulation for granted, National (CBA), March 15, 2019; Honourable Robert Bauman (Chief Justice of British Columbia), It’s the Economy, Stupid, NSRLP (National Self-Represented Litigants Project), May 29, 2019.
[134] Honourable Robert Bauman (Chief Justice of British Columbia), It’s the Economy, Stupid, NSRLP (National Self-Represented Litigants Project), May 29, 2019.
[135] See for example, Jakob Weberstaedt, English Alternative Business Structures and the European single market, 21 International Journal of the Legal Profession, 2014.
[136] Mark Cohen, The Pond Seems Wider: The Regulator Gap Between UK and U.S. Legal Practice, Legal Mosaic, May 4, 2015. See, Annabel Oromoni, LSO rejects paralegal’s motion requesting that the Ontario government regulate the legal profession, Law Times, May 11, 2022; Noel Semple, On a Slow Train to Nowhere: Paralegal Family Law Practice in Ontario, Slaw, August 11, 2022; Gavin and Brooke MacKenzie, Should lawyers have a monopoly over the provision of legal services?, CBA National, Winter 2016.
[137] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017. See, Gavin and Brooke MacKenzie, Should lawyers have a monopoly over the provision of legal services?, CBA National, Winter 2016. Also see, Mark Cohen, The Pond Seems Wider: The Regulator Gap Between UK and U.S. Legal Practice, Legal Mosaic, May 4, 2015.
[138] Jessica K. Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, and Alyx Mark, Judges and the Deregulation of the Lawyer’s Monopoly, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 89, 2021; Ian Mulgrew, End lawyers’ monopoly, competition needed, says expert, Vancouver Sun, April 28, 2019; Noel Semple, On a Slow Train to Nowhere: Paralegal Family Law Practice in Ontario, Slaw, August 11, 2022; Gavin and Brooke MacKenzie, Should lawyers have a monopoly over the provision of legal services?, CBA National, Winter 2016.
[139] Gavin and Brooke MacKenzie, Should lawyers have a monopoly over the provision of legal services?, CBA National, Winter 2016.
[140] Beverley McLachlin, Legal Profession in the 21st Century: Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada (2015 Canadian Bar Association Plenary), Supreme Court of Canada, August 14, 2015. Also see, Bob Goodman and Josh Harder, Four Areas of Legal Ripe for disruption by Smart Startups, Law Technology Today, December 16, 2014.
[141] Nick Robinson, When Lawyers Don’t Get All the Profits: Non-Lawyer Ownership of Legal Services, Access and Professionalism, August 27, 2014, HLS Program on the Legal Profession Research Paper No. 2014-20, online at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2487878.
[142] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017. Also see, Reid Trautz, Will Alternative Business Structures Fly?, Attorney at Work.com (U.S.), September 27, 2016.
[143] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017; Robert Heslett, What alternative business structures mean for the legal profession, The Guardian, June 9, 2010.
[144] Professor Johnathan T. Molot, What’s Wrong with Law Firms? A Corporate Finance Solution to Law Firm Short-Termism, Southern California Law Review 2015. Also see, Ralph Baxter, Looking at the Law Firm Partnership Model and How to Fix it, Thomson Reuters, February 25, 2015; Jeff Gray, Let non-lawyers own law firms: Canadian Bar Association, Globe and Mail, August 14, 2014.
[145] Mark Cohen, Is the Legal Function Fiddling While the Rule of Law is Burning? The Case for an Integrated Response, Forbes, April 11, 2022.
[146] Editorial Board, Lawyers are fighting innovative proposals for more affordable legal assistance. That’s wrong, Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2022; …
[147] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017; Richard Devlin and Ora Morison, Access to Justice and the Ethics and Politics of Alternative Business Structures, 91:3 Canadian Bar Review 483, 2012; David Wiseman, Poverty Law, the Future of Legal Services and Access to Justice: Towards ABS, 3:1 Canadian Journal of Poverty Law 10, 2015.
[148] Justice Constandinos Himonas and Vice Chief Justice Ann Scott, Reform the legal system to close the justice gap, Calmatters.org, November 9, 2021.
[149] ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Services, For Comment: Issues Paper Regarding Alternative Business Structures, AmericanBar.org, April 8, 2016; Alternative Business Structures Have Had A Transformational Impact in Delivering Legal Services, LawTeacher, 2015; Judith A. McMorrow, UK Alternative Business Structures for Legal Practice: Emerging Models and Lessons for the US, 47 Georgetown Journal of International Law 665, 2016; Gillian K. Hadfield, The Cost of Law: Promoting Access to Justice through the (Un) Corporate Practice of Law, 38 Int’l Rev. L. & Econ. 43, 44 (2014); Jayne R. Reardon, Alternative Business Structures: Good for the Public, Good for the Lawyers, 7:2 St. Mary’s Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics 304, 2017; Edward S. Adams, Rethinking the Law Firm Organizational Form and Capitalization Structure, 78 Mo. L. Rev. 777, 778–84, 2013; Candace M. Groth, Protecting the Profession Through the Pen: A Proposal for Liberalizing ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.4 to Allow Multidisciplinary Firms, 37 Hamline L. Rev. 565, 602, 2014; Renee Newman Knake, Democratizing the Delivery of Legal Services, 73 Ohio St. L.J. 1, 3 (2012); Noel Semple, Access to Justice: Is Legal Services Regulation Blocking the Path?, Scholarship at UWindsor, Faculty of Law Publications, 2013; CBA Legal Futures Initiative, Futures: Transforming the Delivery of Legal Services in Canada, Canadian Bar Association (CBA.org), August 2014; James M. McCauley, The Future of the Practice of Law: Can Alternative Business Structures for the Legal Profession Improve Access to Legal Services?, 51 U. Rich. L. Rev. Online, 2016; Jayne Reardon, The Disruption of Alternative Business Structures, 2 Civility.org, April 11, 2017; Noel Semple, Legal Services Regulation in Canada: Plus Ca Change?, Scholarship at UWindsor, Faculty of Law Publications, Spring 2017; Richard Devlin and Ora Morison, Access to Justice and the Ethics and Politics of Alternative Business Structures, 91:3 Canadian Bar Review 483, 2012.
[150] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[151] Omar Ha-Redeye, The Other Legal Professionals, Slaw, July 5, 2015. Also see, Lisa Danielle Trabucco, The Regulation of Paralegals in Ontario: Increased Access to Justice?, PhD Dissertations, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Osgoode Digital Commons, 2021;
[152] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017. See, Richard Devlin and Ora Morison, Access to Justice and the Ethics and Politics of Alternative Business Structures, 91:3 Canadian Bar Review 483, 2012; Judith McMorrow, UK Alternative Business Structures for Legal Practice: Emerging Models and Lessons for the US, 47 Georgetown Journal of International Law 665, 2016; David Wiseman, Poverty Law, the Future of Legal Services and Access to Justice: Towards ABS, 3:1 Canadian Journal of Poverty Law 10, 2015.
[153] Ivan Mitchell Merrow and Madeleine Dusseault, Non-Lawyer Legal Services: An International Round-up, Juste (oba.org), June 16, 2017; Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[154] Lyle Moran, How the Washington Supreme Court’s LLLT program met its demise, ABA Journal, July 9, 2020; David Freeman Engstrom, Lucy Ricca, Graham Ambrose, and Maddie Walsh, Legal Innovation After Reform: Evidence from Regulatory Change, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School, September 2022.
[155] Leonard Wills, Access to Justice: Mitigating the Justice Gap, ABA (americanbar.org), December 3, 2017; Family Law Working Group (Law Society of Ontario), Family Legal Services Provider Licence: Consultation Paper, June 2020; Justice Annemarie E. Bonkalo, Family Legal Services Review. Report Submitted to Attorney General Yasir Naqvi and Treasurer Paul Schabas, December 31, 2016; David Freeman Engstrom, Lucy Ricca, Graham Ambrose, and Maddie Walsh, Legal Innovation After Reform: Evidence from Regulatory Change, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School, September 2022; Jason Solomon and Noelle Smith, The Surprising Success of Washington State’s Limited Licence Legal Technical Program, Stanford Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School (Law.stanford.edu), 2021.
[156] Justice Annemarie E. Bonkalo, Family Legal Services Review. Report Submitted to Attorney General Yasir Naqvi and Treasurer Paul Schabas, December 31, 2016.
[157] Justice Annemarie E. Bonkalo, Family Legal Services Review. Report Submitted to Attorney General Yasir Naqvi and Treasurer Paul Schabas, December 31, 2016.
[158] Justice Neil Gorsuch, Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, Judicature, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2016. Also see, Richard Moorhead, Avrom Sherr & Alan Paterson, Contesting Professionalism: Legal Aid and Nonlawyers in England and Wales, Law & Society Review, Vol. 37, No. 4, 2003; Deborah Rhode, Too Much Law, Too Little Justice: Too Much Rhetoric, Too Little Reform, Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Vol. 11, 1998; Hon. Deno G. HImonas and Tyler J. Hubbard, Democratizing the Rule of Law, Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, Vol. XVI, 2020.
[159] Justice Neil Gorsuch, Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, Judicature, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2016.
[160] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017. See, Neil Rose, PwC: New business structures and capital will allow big law firms to deliver ‘fundamental change’, Legal Futures.co.uk, October 16, 2017; PwC, 26th Annual Law Firm’s Survey: Time for change – PwC Law Firms’ Survey 2017, PwC.co.uk, 2017.
[161] Richard Devlin and Ora Morison, Access to Justice and the Ethics and Politics of Alternative Business Structures, 91:3 Canadian Bar Review 483, 2012.
[162] Zena Olinjnyk, BC outlines intentions to create a single regulator governing lawyers, notaries, paralegals, Canadian Lawyer, September 22, 2022; Legal Professions Regulatory Modernization, Ministry of Attorney General Intentions Paper, British Columbia (engage.gov.bc.ca), September 2022; Elizabeth Raymer, Should you hire a lawyer or a paralegal?, Canadian Lawyer, September 3, 2021; The Benchers have approved the Licensed Paralegal Task Force’s proposal to adopt a grassroots approach to advance the licensed paralegal initiative within a ‘regulatory sandbox’, Licensed Paralegals, Law Society of British Columbia (lawsociety.bc.ca), Trudi Brown QC (Chair), Licensed Paralegal Task Force Report: Proposal for developing and regulating alternate legal service providers, Law Society of British Columbia (lawsociety.bc.ca), September 25, 2020; Sam Skolnik, Canada Joins U.S. in Nonlawyer Legal Service Ownership Tests, Bloomberg Law, August 6, 2021; Jordan Furlong, The Paradigm Shift of Regulatory Sandboxes, Slaw, December 17, 2020; Adrian Macnab, Law Society votes to approve regulatory sandbox for innovative legal tech development, Law Times, April 22, 2021.
[163] Karen Sloan, California lawmakers pull plug on legal industry reforms, Reuters, August 29, 2022; Bob Ambrogi, California’s Chief Justice Faults Legislature and Lawyer Lobbying for Blocking Movement on Regulatory Reforms, LawSites. July 27, 2022.
[164] David Freeman Engstrom, Lucy Ricca, Graham Ambrose, and Maddie Walsh, Legal Innovation After Reform: Evidence from Regulatory Change, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School, September 2022. Also see, David Freeman Engstrom, Stanford Law’s David Freeman Engstrom on California’s Access-to-Justice Crisis and the State Bar’s Closing the Justice Gap Working Group, Stanford Center on the Legal Profession (law.stanford.edu), December 17, 2021; C. Thea Pitzen, Can Nonlawyers Close the Legal Services Gap?, ABA (americanbar.org), April 21, 2022; Matt Reynolds, Utah’s reforms offer model for serving low-income and indigent people, report suggests, ABA Journal, September 29, 2022.
[165] Thomas Clarke and Lucy Ricca, A Framework for Designing and Implementing Regulatory Reform, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School (Law.Stanford.edu), July 2022; David Freeman Engstrom, Lucy Ricca, Graham Ambrose, and Maddie Walsh, Legal Innovation After Reform: Evidence from Regulatory Change, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School (Law.Stanford.edu), September 2022.
[166] Leveraging the SDGs for inclusive Growth: Delivering Access to Justice for All, OECD and Open Society Foundations, Issues Brief, 2016; Alice Woolley and Trevor Farrow, Addressing Access to Justice Through New Legal Service Providers: Opportunities and Challenges, Texas A&M Law Review, Vol. 3, Issue 3, 2016.
[167] C. Thea Pitzen, Can Nonlawyers Close the Legal Services Gap?, ABA (americanbar.org), April 21, 2022.
[168] Jacob Millar and Alyssa Hall, Regulation of the legal profession in Canada: overview, Thomson Reuters Practical Law, June 1, 2021 (“In some Canadian jurisdictions, paralegals are permitted to represent clients in certain proceedings in tribunals and lower courts. … Quebec and British Columbia allow notaries to do work reserved to lawyers in other provinces, such as real estate.”); Terry Davidson, Ian Burns, and John Schofield, Canada has mixed approach on regulating paralegals; greater acceptance needed: industry voices, Lawyers Daily, November 4, 2020.
[169] Zena Olinjnyk, BC outlines intentions to create a single regulator governing lawyers, notaries, paralegals, Canadian Lawyer, September 22, 2022; Legal Professions Regulatory Modernization, Ministry of Attorney General Intentions Paper, British Columbia (engage.gov.bc.ca), September 2022; Amendments will modernize legal professions regulation, improve access to justice, British Columbia (news.gov.bc.ca), March 3, 2022.
[170] Noel Semple, On a Slow Train to Nowhere: Paralegal Family Law Practice in Ontario, Slaw, August 11, 2022; Lisa Danielle Trabucco, The Regulation of Paralegals in Ontario: Increased Access to Justice?, PhD Dissertations, Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Osgoode Digital Commons, 2021; GlobeNewswire, Ontario Access to Justice: The Law Society of Ontario will be challenged on whether it facilitates access to justice for Ontario’s most vulnerable people, Financial Post, May 4, 2022. Alternatively, see: Teresa Donnelly, Celebrating 15 years of regulation of Ontario’s paralegals, Gazette, Law Society of Ontario (lso.ca), May 17, 2022. But see generally, Jordan Furlong, The Paradigm Shift of Regulatory Sandboxes, Slaw, December 17, 2020 (“It’s been more than 20 years since Ontario’s law society, at the direction of the provincial government, reluctantly agreed to license and regulate independent paralegals. Yet paralegals’ scope of practice has been so constrained as to make them effectively irrelevant to the larger legal marketplace. Family law lawyers in Ontario seem determined to ensure the same thing happens with the proposed family law services providers in that province”.).
[171] Ivan Mitchell Merrow and Madeleine Dusseault, Non-Lawyer Legal Services: An International Round-up, Juste (oba.org), June 16, 2017.
[172] Ivan Mitchell Merrow and Madeleine Dusseault, Non-Lawyer Legal Services: An International Round-up, Juste (oba.org), June 16, 2017.
[173] Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016; Glenn Kauth, Study questions access to justice benefits of ABS, Canadian Lawyer, January 26, 2015.
[174] C. Thea Pitzen, Can Nonlawyers Close the Legal Services Gap?, ABA (americanbar.org), April 21, 2022; Justice For All? How Regulatory Sandboxes Benefit the Wrong People and Jeopardize the Integrity of Law in Michigan and Beyond, Michigan Association for Justice, May 26, 2022; Lucy Ricca, UK Legal Service Reforms Under the Legal Services Act (2007): A Brief Overview, Stanford Center on the Legal Profession, February 21, 2019
[175] Edward Iacobucci and Michael Trebilcock, An Economic Analysis of Alternative Business Structures for the Practice of Law, Canadian Bar Review, Vol. 92, 2013; David Freeman Engstrom, Lucy Ricca, Graham Ambrose, and Maddie Walsh, Legal Innovation After Reform: Evidence from Regulatory Change, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School, September 2022.
[176] Jena McGill, Amy Salyzyn, Suzanne Bouclin, and Karen Galldin, Emerging Technological Solutions to Access to Justice Problems: Opportunities and Risks of Mobile and Web-based Apps, Knowledge Synthesis Report Submitted to: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, October 13, 2016; Jena McGill, Suzanne Bouclin, and Amy Salyzyn, Mobile and Web-based Legal Apps: Opportunities, Risks and Information Gaps, Canadian Journal of Law and Technology, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2017.
[177] David Freeman Engstrom, Rethinking the Regulation of Legal Services: What States Are Doing to Move the Needle on Access to Justice, Stanford Center on the Legal Profession (law.stanford.edu), May 18, 2022; Emma Beames, Technology-based legal document generation services and the regulation of legal practice in Australia, Alternative Law Journal, Vol. 42, No. 4, 2017; Rebecca Sandefur, Legal Tech for Non-Lawyers: Report of the Survey of US Legal Technologies, American Bar Foundation, 2019.
[178] Ivan Mitchell Merrow and Madeleine Dusseault, Non-Lawyer Legal Services: An International Round-up, Juste (oba.org), June 16, 2017; Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017; Jess Bravin, Justice Gorsuch Said Findings of Probe Into Leaked Roe Draft Opinion Will Be Made in Report, Wall Street Journal, September 8, 2022.
[179] Mauricio Duarte, Justice: How can we make it accessible?, A2J Tech, April 10, 2020; Jason Tashea, How the U.S. can compete with China on digital justice technology, Brookings (Tech Stream: Tomorrow’s tech policy conversations today), October 25, 2021; Jason Tashea, Justice-as-a-Platform, MIT.edu, December 7, 2021; Report of The Summit on the Use of Technology to Expand Access to Justice, Legal Services Corporation (lsc.gov), 2013; Trevor Farrow and Lesley Jacobs (Editors), The Justice Crisis: The Cost and Value of Accessing Law, UBC Press, 2020; Siddharth Peter de Souza and Maximilian Spohr (editors), Technology, Innovation, and Access to Justice: Dialogues on the Future of Law, Edinburgh University Press, 2021; Steve Rubley, Improving Access to Justice: How Technology Companies Can Help, Forbes, August 31, 2021; Richard Susskind, Online Courts and the Future of Justice, Oxford University Press, 2019. Also see, Olivia Stefanovich, ‘We’re in trouble’: Advocates urge Ottawa to help close the access-to-justice gap, CBC News, April 18, 2021.
[180] Report of The Summit on the Use of Technology to Expand Access to Justice, Legal Services Corporation (lsc.gov), 2013; Richard Susskind, Online Courts and the Future of Justice, Oxford University Press, 2019; Trevor Farrow and Lesley Jacobs (Editors), The Justice Crisis: The Cost and Value of Accessing Law, UBC Press, 2020; Rebecca Sandefur, Legal Tech for Non-Lawyers: Report of the Survey of US Legal Technologies, American Bar Foundation, 2019; Alexandre Biard, Jos Hoevernaars, Xandra Kramer and Erlis Themeli, Introduction: The Future of Access to Justice – Beyond Science Fiction, chapter In: A. Biard, J. Hoevernaars, X. Kramer, E. Themeli (Editors), New Pathways to Civil Justice in Europe, Spring, 2021; Jane Bailey, Jacquelyn Burkell, and Graham Reynolds, Access to Justice for All: Towards An “Expansive Vision” of Justice and Technology, Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2013.
[181] Lindsay Frame, On the Design of Virtual Courts: Creating User-Centered, Evidence-Based Spaces, The Advocate, Vol. 80, Part 3, May 2022. Also see, Richard Susskind, Online Courts and the Future of Justice, Oxford University Press, 2019.
[182] Editorial Board, Lawyers are fighting innovative proposals for more affordable legal assistance. That’s wrong, Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2022.
[183] Mai Nguyen, The untold history of the legal profession, Precedent, December 4, 2018. Also see, Philip Girard, Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life, University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2nd Edition, 2005; C. Ian Kyer, Lawyers, Families, and Businesses: The Shaping of a Bay Street Law Firm, Faskens 1863-1963, Irwin Law, 2013; New Study finds gender and racial bias endemic in legal profession, ABA (americanbar.org), September 6, 2018.
[184] How Regulation Is – and Isn’t – Changing Legal Services: Broad agreement exists that regulatory change in the law is needed, Disruptive Innovation in Legal Services, (The Practice, Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School), Vol. 1, Issue 2, January-February 2015. Also see, Nick Hilborne, In-house lawyers ‘should add regulatory rules to employment contracts’, Legal Futures, August 30, 2022.
[185] C. Thea Pitzen, Can Nonlawyers Close the Legal Services Gap?, ABA (americanbar.org), April 21, 2022.
[186] Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[187] See for example: Clifford Winston, David Burk, and Jai Yan, Trouble at the Bar: An Economics Perspective on the Legal Profession and the Case for Fundamental Reform, Brookings Institution Press, 2021; Clifford Winston, Robert Crandall, and Vikram Maheshri, First Thing We Do, Let’s Deregulate All the Lawyers, Brookings Institution Press, 2011.
[188] Editorial, Too Much Law – and Too Little, New York Times, April 23, 1983; Derek Bok, There is far to much law for those who can afford it and far too little for those who cannot, AZQuotes.com.
[189] David Freeman Engstrom, Lucy Ricca, Graham Ambrose, and Maddie Walsh, Legal Innovation After Reform: Evidence from Regulatory Change, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School (Law.Stanford.edu), September 2022.
[190] Lee Akazaki, How origins of ABS in U.K. and Australian Law differ from Canada, leeakazaki.com, 2014.
[191] James M. McCauley, The Future of the Practice of Law: Can Alternative Business Structures for the Legal Profession Improve Access to Legal Services?, 51 U. Rich. L. Rev. Online, 2016.
[192] Robert Mysicka, Who Watches the Watchmen? The Role of the Self-Regulator, Commentary No. 416, C.D. Howe Institute, October 2014.
[193] Robert Mysicka, Who Watches the Watchmen? The Role of the Self-Regulator, Commentary No. 416, C.D. Howe Institute, October 2014.
[194] Ken Chasse, Access to Justice – Unaffordable Legal Services’ Concepts and Solutions, papers.ssrn.com, July 19, 2016 (last revised August 29, 2017).
[195] Keith Coats, A Warning to Leaders: Turbulence is not the Danger, Tomorrow Today Global.com, November 15, 2011.
[196] Judith A. McMorrow, UK Alternative Business Structures for Legal Practice: Emerging Models and Lessons for the US, 47 Georgetown Journal of International Law 665, 2016; Jakob Weberstaedt, English Alternative Business Structures and the European single market, 21 International Journal of the Legal Profession, 2014; David Freeman Engstrom, Lucy Ricca, Graham Ambrose, and Maddie Walsh, Legal Innovation After Reform: Evidence from Regulatory Change, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School (Law.Stanford.edu), September 2022; Jessica K. Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, and Alyx Mark, Judges and the Deregulation of the Lawyer’s Monopoly, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 89, 2021; Ian Mulgrew, End lawyers’ monopoly, competition needed, says expert, Vancouver Sun, April 28, 2019; Honourable Justice Thomas Cromwell, The Legal Services Gap: Access to Justice as a Regulatory Issue, Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 42, Issue 1, 2016. Also see, John Hyde, Top – 70 firms added to ABS roster, Law Gazette.co.uk, December 19, 2013 (“There is no downside to an ABS licence and it will give us extra flexibility to admit members to the LLP who are not solicitors”. – Michael Ward, Head of Legal Practice, Gateley Plc, UK).
[197] Thomas Clarke and Lucy Ricca, A Framework for Designing and Implementing Regulatory Reform, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School (Law.Stanford.edu), July 2022. Also see, David Freeman Engstrom, Lucy Ricca, Graham Ambrose, and Maddie Walsh, Legal Innovation After Reform: Evidence from Regulatory Change, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School (Law.Stanford.edu), September 2022.
[198] The Case Against Clones, The Economist, February 2, 2013; Mark Cohen, The Pond Seems Wider: The Regulator Gap Between UK and U.S. Legal Practice, Legal Mosaic, May 4, 2015; Eric Sigurdson, Alternative Business Structures, Competition, and Legal Services Delivery: The Case for ABSs v. the Legal Profession’s Monopoly in North America, Sigurdson Post, November 7, 2017.
[199] Thomas Clarke and Lucy Ricca, A Framework for Designing and Implementing Regulatory Reform, Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School (Law.Stanford.edu), July 2022.
[200] Justice Neil Gorsuch, Access to Affordable Justice: A Challenge to the Bench, Bar and Academy, Judicature, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2016. See, Clifford Winston, Robert Crandall, and Vikram Maheshri, First Thing We Do, Let’s Deregulate All the Lawyers, Brookings Institution Press, 2011; Clifford Winston, David Burk, and Jai Yan, Trouble at the Bar: An Economics Perspective on the Legal Profession and the Case for Fundamental Reform, Brookings Institution Press, 2021.
[201] Lee Akazaki, How origins of ABS in U.K. and Australian Law differ from Canada, leeakazaki.com, 2014.
[202] James E. Moliterno, The Trouble with Lawyer Regulation, 62 Emory Law Journal 885, 2013; Richard Devlin and Porter Heffernan, The End(s) of Self Regulation?, Alberta Law Review, Vol. 45, No. 5, 2008; Paul Douglas Paton, ‘In the Public Interest’: Threats to Self-Regulation of the Legal Profession in Ontario, 1998-2006, Dissertation submitted to School of Law and Committee of Graduate Studies of Stanford University re Degree of Doctor of the Science of Law, February 2008; Fred Zacharias, The Myth of Self-Regulation, Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 93, July 2009.
[203] James Moliterno, The Trouble with Lawyer Regulation, 62 Emory Law Journal 885, 2013. Also see, James E. Moliterno, The American Legal Profession in Crisis: Resistance and Responses to Change, Oxford University Press, 2013.
