Utahlking real reform? Yes, Utah absolutely is.

Infrequent readers will know this pun structure is one that I have no shame in running into the ground every time it is relevant.

Frequent readers will know I am far too willing to break the fourth wall here. So just for background I had resigned myself to writing a post on Friday about the New Jersey lawyer who could only get reinstated to practice if he could assure that his wife would not have any further access to their trust accounts and it was going to likely be unnecessarily preachy and riddled with hacky references to how hard that might be when everyone is trapped in their house. So, while you are only getting content a few days late, thanks to Utah you at least are spared that the content that could have been.)

Last Friday, Utah released for public comment the final version of its work product for an overhaul of significant parts of its ethics rules. If you need to get back up to speed on that issue and the pre-pandemic discussions of it, you can find prior posts about the rapid work of Utah’s task force here.

If you’d rather read the source materials put out for public comment on April 24, 2020 yourself, you can get to them all through this link.

If you’ll allow me to describe them to you in all of their relative glory, I’ll do so now.

I’d like to start with what ought to be the least controversial piece but a part that still really ought to be cherished for the elegant thing that it is, reducing the rules on lawyer advertising down to the core and nothing but the core.

• The Utah Supreme Court’s proposal would eliminate RPCs 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, and 7.5 and, instead, revise RPC 7.1 to address the terrain by (a) prohibiting lawyers from making false and misleading claims about themselves or their services and (b) prohibiting lawyers from going about dealing with people in ways that involve coercion, duress, or harassment.

If any state were proposing to do this to their advertising rules, and only just this, it would be an exciting development toward important regulatory reform. But wait … there’s so much more to Utah’s proposal. As a result, comprehensive reform of the advertising rules is nearly just the icing.

The centerpiece of Utah’s proposed rule revisions though involves an overhaul of RPC 5.4 in the form of the creation of two rules, one 5.4A that will look a good bit like the current rule with one very significant change and another 5.4B that will look like nothing that has been actually implemented so far in the United States.

Under the proposal, RPC 5.4A will apply to lawyers who continue to operate in the traditional fashion (read, at least in its pre-pandemic context to mean working in a law firm owned and operated only by lawyers). That rule would carry forward existing restrictions on partnerships with non-lawyers and on operating in the form of any entity in which someone who is a not a lawyer has a financial interest but would permit lawyers in such conventional settings to be able to share fees with people other than lawyers as long as sufficient disclosure is made to the client (and anyone other than the client who is paying the fee) about the fact that such sharing is occurring/going to occur and with whom. The rule though is also refashioned to make clear that lawyers still can only do these things as long as there is no interference with their independent professional judgment, maintaining their loyalty to their client, and protecting client confidences.

(One other seemingly pedestrian item in its package of revisions is to remove the current restrictions on fee sharing between lawyers not in the same firm by deleting RPC 1.5(e) altogether. This makes a lot of sense on a standalone basis as a variety of jurisdictions already permit “naked” referrals between lawyers not in the same firm as long as there is a certain amount of disclosure, but if you are going to open the doors for lawyers to share fees with people who aren’t lawyers then you certainly have to drop the RPC 1.5(e) approach.)

RPC 5.4B would be a new thing altogether and would govern the conduct of lawyers that choose to practice in nontraditional structures as part of a legal regulatory Sandbox to be launched Utah. This proposed rule establishes an ability for lawyers to practice in ways that RPC 5.4A would prohibit as long as there is no interference with any of the lawyers duties that are also stressed in RPC 5.4A (independent professional judgment, loyalty, and confidentiality). Specifically, what it permits is best described using the proposed rule itself:

(b) A lawyer may practice law with nonlawyers, or in an organization, including a partnership, in which a financial interest is held or managerial authority is exercised by one or more persons who are nonlawyers, provided that the lawyer shall:

(1) before accepting a representation, provide written notice to a prospective client that one or more nonlawyers holds a financial interest in the organization in which the lawyer practices or that one or more nonlawyers exercises managerial authority over the lawyer; and

(2) set forth in writing to a client the financial and managerial structure of the organization in which the lawyer practices.

And to implement the Sandbox concept that RPC 5.4B will permit lawyers to participate in, and to make sure that there exists an entity that will have regulatory authority over those participants in the Sandbox who are not lawyers, the Utah Supreme Court has released a proposed Standing Order that would be the foundational document for establishing the relevant regulatory entity and the regulatory principles that will govern its work.

The relevant regulatory entity will be the Office of Legal Services Innovation and, for a pilot period of two years from whenever the effective date of the Standing Order comes to pass, this Innovation Office will “establish and administer a pilot legal regulatory sandbox (Sandbox) through which individuals and entities may be approved to offer nontraditional legal services to the public by nontraditional providers or traditional providers using novel approaches and means, including options not permitted by the Rules of Professional Conduct and other applicable rules.”

And, as for the relevant regulatory principles? Those will be as follows:

1. Regulation should be based on the evaluation of risk to the consumer.
2. Risk to the consumer should be evaluated relative to the current legal services options available.
3. Regulation should establish probabilistic thresholds for acceptable levels of harm.
4. Regulation should be empirically driven.
5. Regulation should be guided by a market-based approach.

There is a 90-day comment period on the proposal which ends on July 23, 2020. That comment period is not only for Utahns. (And, yes, according to the Standing Order that is how to refer to a collection of residents of Utah. College football fans likely believed, and My Cousin Vinny fanatics would likely have been demanding, that Utes to be the official term.)