Pretty quick on the heels of this prior post, we now have a further development from the West Coast on the potential utility of limited license legal technicians, i.e. “nurse practitioners for the legal profession,” in providing better access to justice. The California State Bar has now put out for public comment a number of proposals contained in a Civil Justice Strategies Task Force Report and Recommendation focusing on ways California might reduce its own “justice gap.”
The report and recommendation covers quite a few topics, but I think it worth knowing that it does specifically call for studying how to design an LLLT pilot program. The pilot would be focused on one subject matter area of the law, the report does not pick one definitively but mentions that family law, landlord/tenant, and certain consumer cases were discussed. The California task force also recommends another pilot program that would explore another approach to expanding access to justice that would use “navigators” who would help self-represented litigants and would even permit them to sit at counsel table though not speak to the court during proceedings. To give this something of a frame of reference for Tennessee lawyers, a comparison that would not be “apples to apples” but would at least still involve comparing “apples” to something else that is, at least, a fruit would be like CASA but for grown ups.
A little over a year ago, New York launched such a program in landlord/tenant matters and consumer debt cases, which lists among the things that these specially-trained non-lawyer navigators will provide to self-represented parties – “moral support.”
For those who might be so inclined, the public comment deadline out in California is May 11, 2015.