Responsive Law Guides California to Strategies That Will Decrease Its Justice Gap

Written by Briane Cornish

In November 2014, the California State Bar Board of Trustees approved the creation and appointment of the Civil Justice Strategies Task Force. The charge of the task force was to analyze the reasons for the state’s justice gap: the conundrum of how there are so many lawyers yet so many Americans have unmet legal needs and cannot afford or access legal help. Specifically, the task force intended to study creative solutions and innovative strategies in use by other states and other countries that have the potential to greatly improve access to justice in California.

​Responsive Law sent an array of innovative and creative solutions to the Civil Justice Strategies Task Force. We advised the task force to allow for alternative business structures to address the justice gap. Alternative business structures entail permitting outside investors to provide capital to legal service companies or allowing non-legal companies to partner and share fees with a legal organization. Both the United Kingdom and Australia have allowed legal entities to accept outside investment from non-lawyers; yet no state in the U.S has done so due to unfounded concerns that outside investment will lead to an increase in unethical violations by lawyers. 

We specifically recommended that California allow outside investments in the growing number of legal startups that already exist in their state. We highlighted the fact that pro-bono services and legal aid literally do not have the capacity to provide even half of the unmet need for legal services. Thus, California needs to invest in creating a larger array of affordable legal services via outside investment in legal startups.

We also recommended allowing more non-lawyers to provide legal help to consumers. We cited the launch of limited license legal technicians (a regulated profession of non-lawyers who provide document preparation and other legal assistance) in Washington state. We also recommended the proven strategy of limiting the breadth of unauthorized practice of law claims (UPL). Research has shown that UPL cases are brought mostly by lawyers, for anti-competitive reasons, as opposed to a dissatisfied customer. As Responsive Law has noted before, such aggressive UPL enforcement chills legal innovation. Specifically we proposed that the task force create a safe harbor provision for document preparation similar to the one in Texas that has helped to provide many Texans with access to self-help tools. We also encouraged the task force to again look to the United Kingdom where non-lawyers referred to as McKenzie friends have operated for the past 50 years providing court navigation help, moral support, case paper management and advice on courtroom conduct for free or for a small fee.

Lastly, we encouraged the task force to take the lead (as opposed to waiting for other states) by launching a compact with other states to allow for multi-jurisdictional practice similar to what exists in Canada. In Canada, a lawyer can practice in any province; allowing multi-jurisdictional practice allows for greater competition in the provision legal services and more lawyers and law firms to reach economies of scale. Thus the strategy of multi-jurisdictional practice could provide Californians with unprecedented access to lawyers. We believe California is off to a good start of addressing their growing access to justice gap; the strategies and solutions we have recommended will supercharge California’s potential to actually close the justice gap.
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You can read our comments to the California Bar here.

Briane Cornish is a Responsive Law intern.