How to Regulate Legal Services to Promote Access, Innovation, and the Quality of Lawyering
53 Pages Posted: 17 Feb 2016
Date Written: February 16, 2016
Abstract
Proposals to change the regulatory framework for the legal profession to increase access to legal services have been made for decades. The organized bar frequently responds to these proposals by raising concerns about the difficulty of regulating alternative providers and corporate legal services entities with nonlawyer investors or managers. In this paper we explore the nature of the regulatory challenge. By reviewing in detail the approach developed in the U.K. under the 2007 Legal Services Act - which initiated a licensing regime for legal services entities including but not limited to lawyer‐owned law firms - we demonstrate the feasibility, and benefits, of developing an analogous regime in the U.S.
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