Last week, the Utah Supreme Court officially approved the most “radical” change in any state’s ethics rules since DC adopted a limited approval for law firms to have partners who are not lawyers several decades ago.
The Utah Supreme Court announced its adoption of a package of reforms aimed at improving the access to justice gap in Utah as well as improving the availability of access to legal information generally. I’ve written about the Utah proposal in the past, but you can read the press release regarding approval of the reforms issued by the Utah Supreme Court here.
In addition to reforms to the advertising rules, the re-regulation effort revises Utah’s version of RPC 5.4 and 7.2 to allow people who are not lawyers to have ownership interests in law firms, allow lawyers and people who are not lawyers to work together in entities that will provide legal services and allow lawyers to compensate people who are not lawyers for bringing them work. As part and parcel of these efforts, Utah has formed a regulatory “sandbox” where entities can apply to take advantage of these provisions and deliver legal services and through which data can be gathered about the effectiveness of the revisions. The sandbox program will operate initially as a two-year program. You can read more takes online about this development here, here, and here.
Also, just shy of a month ago now, the Chicago Bar Association became the first voluntary bar association to have a task force report that also proposes altering aspects of the legal landscape to address these issues. You can read the full task force report from the Chicago Bar Association here if you’d like. What the Chicago Bar proposes does not go nearly as far as what Utah is undertaking – specifically the Chicago Bar was not willing to take on ownership restrictions — but it does propose significant reforms, including:
- Removing restrictions on the ability of lawyers to work with intermediaries to deliver legal services
- Creating a new category of licensed paralegal that could deliver certain limited legal services to consumers
- Streamlining the Illinois ethics rules related to advertising
Finally (for today), the least important development of the three, but one I shamelessly will still write about… I am honored to report that on Friday of last week I was elected as President-Elect of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers. As a result, I will serve in that capacity from August 2020 to August 2021 and will then become President of APRL for a one-year term commencing in August 2021. I am very much looking forward to being able to serve APRL as the 32nd President in its history as an organization.