Category Archives: Limited License Legal Technician Program

Utah Lawyers Not Yet Ready To Accept Limited Paralegal Practitioners.

20 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in Education, Limited License Legal Technician Program, Paralegals/Legal Assistants, Utah Supreme Court

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A New Kind Of Paralegal Is Coming To Help Utahns Navigate The Court System, by Jessica  Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune (published December 14, 2015)

http://www.sltrib.com/home/3307300-155/a-new-kind-of-paralegal-is

There are issues with how Utahns access their justice  system, a Utah Supreme Court justice said.

Many people either can’t afford lawyers, Deno Himonas said Monday, or simply don’t want to hire one to help them navigate the court system as they file for divorce, settle debts or resolve eviction issues. . . .

To that end, the Utah Supreme Court has approved the creation of a new legal profession: limited paralegal practitioners.

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Creating a new career field from the ground up won’t be without challenges, however.

One of the biggest hurdles may be getting Utah lawyers to support the program. The task force report said 60 percent of lawyers recently surveyed by the Utah State Bar either disagreed or ‘strongly disagreed’ with a proposal to explore limited licenses for certain practice areas.

Utah’s Major Decisions About The Paralegal Profession.

19 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by in Limited License Legal Technician Program, Paralegals/Legal Assistants, Utah Supreme Court

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Utah made some major decisions about the paralegal profession in 2015. In August, the Utah Supreme Court, Utah State Bar, and National Center for State Courts took a hard look at the role of non-lawyers:

Non-Lawyer Legal Assistance Roles – Efficacy, Design, and Implementation, Thomas M. Clark, Ph.D., National Center for State Courts (August 2015)

Non-Lawyer Legal Assistance Roles

In November 2015, the Utah Supreme Court’s Task Force also tackled limited legal licensing of non-lawyers:

Utah Supreme Court Task Force to Examine Limited Legal Licensing

http://www.utcourts.gov/committees/limited_legal/Supreme%20Court%20Task%20Force%20to%20Examine%20Limited%20Legal%20Licensing.pdf

You can find both here at the Utah Courts website under Publications/Court Reports:

http://www.utcourts.gov/resources/reports/

Limited License Legal Technicians – Can They Really Practice Law?

23 Saturday May 2015

Posted by in Family Law, Limited License Legal Technician Program, Paralegals/Legal Assistants, Regulation, Unauthorized Practice of Law, Washington Supreme Court

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Future or Folly: Limited License Legal Technicians, by 2Civility, Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism (with hat tip to William P. Statsky)

http://tinyurl.com/lk9jap6

It’s graduation time. This year, there is a brand new class of graduates in the State of Washington: Limited License Legal Technicians (LLLTs). These graduates are from a unique legal educational program—not a traditional law school. Yet they will eventually have a law license to perform limited legal services in family law. . . .

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Three States Consider Non-Lawyers’ Limited License and Registration Programs.

05 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by in Lawyer Supervision, Limited License Legal Technician Program, Paralegals/Legal Assistants, Regulation

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Three Notable Updates on Non-Lawyers Providing Legal Assistance, by Robert Ambrogi, Law Sites Blog (with hat tip to William Statsky!)

http://blog.oregonlegalresearch.com/2015/03/non-lawyer-legal-assistance-limited-license-legal-technicians-oregon.html

 

In the January 2015 issue of the ABA Journal, I had an article about Washington state’s limited license legal technician (LLLT) program, which will formally license non-lawyers to deliver legal services in limited circumstances independently, without a lawyer’s supervision. The article also discussed New York’s program of court navigators and reported on other states considering programs similar to Washington’s, including California and Oregon. Since that article came out, there have been three notable developments.

Oregon Task Force Calls for Legal Technicians

In the ABA Journal piece, I noted that the Oregon State Bar had convened a Task Force on limited license legal technicians in 2013 and that its final report was expected soon. On Feb. 13, the Task Force issued its report. In it, the Task Force recommended to the OSB’s board of governors ‘that is consider the general concept of a limited license for legal technicians as one component of the BOG’s overall strategy for increasing access to justice.’ The report noted that a large majority of the Task Force members — but not all of them — concurred in the recommendation.

Should the Board decide to proceed with this concept, the Task Force recommends a new Board or Task Force be established to develop the detailed framework of the program. For the reasons set out herein, the BOG should review the recently established Washington State Bar Association LLLT program and consider it as a potential model.

The report praised the Washington LLLT program as ‘comprehensive and well thought-out’ and urged the OSB, should it decide to proceed with a legal technician program, to ‘review, consider and learn from Washington’s program.’

The Task Force further recommended that the first area to be licensed be family law, including guardianship. . . .

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Non-Lawyers Practicing Law? Washington’s Limited License Legal Technician.

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Limited License Legal Technician Program, Paralegals/Legal Assistants, Regulation, Unauthorized Practice of Law

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Debating The Pros and Cons of Non-Lawyers Practicing Law, by Robert Ambrogi, Law Sites Blog

http://www.lawsitesblog.com/2015/01/pros-cons-non-lawyers-practicing-law.html

As I noted here recently, I have an article in the current issue of the ABA Journal about the use of non-lawyers to help close the access to justice gap by allowing them to provide legal advice in limited circumstances. A particular focus of the article is Washington state’s limited license legal technician (LLLT) program.

The article prompted two posts last week at Above the Law that considered the pros and cons of allowing non-lawyers to practice law.

In the first, Can Nonlawyers Close The Access-To-Justice Gap?, Sam Wright, a ‘dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding-heart public interest lawyer,’ couldn’t quite decide how he feels about the idea. ‘It’s easy to see how this could be a win for low- and middle-income people who currently find themselves floundering in the access-to-justice gap,’ he writes. But then he goes on to say that it is ‘also easy to see how this could be a blow to the present-day legal profession with its hordes of underemployed lawyers’ and that it is ‘also easy to see how programs like Washington’s could do a poor job closing the access-to-justice gap.’ Wright’s bottom line is to take a wait-and-see position: ‘Regardless, the LLLT program is an interesting approach to a real problem, and I’ll be watching to see what comes of it.’

From everything I’ve learned about this issue, it is clear to me that this is not about displacing lawyers. The magnitude of the A2J gap is so enormous that lawyers can never close it alone. There could never be a sufficient level of pro bono or reduced-fee services to meet the needs. Study upon study has concluded that 80 to 90 percent of low and moderate income people with legal problems are unable to obtain legal representation. That is an enormous problem.

You may have noticed that, even with a glut of lawyers, the problem isn’t getting fixed. . . .

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