This news out of Washington state is an unfortunate development if you had hopes that the concept of Limited License Legal Technicians (LLTs) might be a more broadly adopted cure for the “justice gap” that ails the profession in many parts of the country. Washington state’s decision to permit lawyers to share attorney fees with LLLTs and to permit LLLTs to have ownership interests in law firms is going to likely curtail just how easily this concept can be spread to other parts of the country. For those new to this blog, I’ve written on a couple of occasions here and here about this concept of the equivalent of a “nurse practitioner for the legal profession.”
If there is something like a “third rail” in the legal profession in the U.S., it would be allowing ownership in law firms by people who aren’t lawyers. Over the years, proposals to open up investment or ownership opportunities in law firms in the U.S. have stirred up anger and passionate opposition. As a result, other than Washington, D.C.’s unique version of RPC 5.4, efforts to open up such opportunities have gone nowhere. And, sometimes, even thinking out loud about the possibilities gets met with shouting.
My suspicion has been that the arguments against pursuing LLLTs most likely to gain real traction in other jurisdictions were always going to be of the “slippery slope” variety. Washington state’s move to open up law firm ownership opportunities to the ranks of these legal technicians will only make it harder to knock down such concerns. Even the headline of, and the tone of the ABA article linked to above, gives a feel for how this may very well shift the dynamic and the nature of the conversation in a direction that is simply not helpful if you were thinking LLLTs might be a viable answer other than in a handful of jurisdictions.