Public Interest

Can Nonlawyers Close The Access-To-Justice Gap?

In some states, certain nonlawyers -- “limited license legal technicians” or LLLTs -- will soon be able to to practice law in areas of particular need. How will this affect the justice gap?

By  
on

My time as a legal services lawyer taught me many things.  Among them: there really is significant legal need out there.  I inherited hundreds of clients from my predecessor, and my first day on the job was spent meeting several of them for the first time in a courtroom hallway before arguing on their behalf in court that very morning.  I always felt like a band-aid on a hemophiliac.  My clients had developed severe legal problems by the time they got to me, and a little advice earlier in the process might have avoided a lot of damage.

That’s the truth of legal need: there’s a lot more of it than there are professionals equipped to deal with it, notwithstanding the surge of new practicing attorneys that law schools have been churning out.  Legal aid is effectively a triage system that leaves an awful lot of people untreated.  We call this the “access-to-justice gap.”

Some numbers:  A 2008 report out of Georgia [PDF] found that even back then, when we’d only just fallen off an economic cliff, a mere 9% of low- and moderate-income people with legal needs managed to get help from a lawyer.  More recent statistics from Massachusetts [PDF] are pretty bleak:  In 2013, legal aid agencies in the state turned away 64% of eligible low-income people, the roster of legal aid lawyers dropped in number from 191 to 128, and income-based eligibility for legal services (read: poverty) grew by over 20%.  A big part of the reason for the decrease in legal aid?  From 2007 to 2014, Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts (IOLTA) funds — a major source of funding for civil legal services — dropped from $31.8 million directed to these services all the way down to an estimated $4.5 million.

So the gap is real.  What’s to be done about it?

One idea that’s about to be tested in the State of Washington is to allow certain nonlawyers — “limited license legal technicians” or LLLTs — to practice law in areas of particular need (in Washington’s case, family law).  A recent ABA Journal article explored this trend, trumpeting Washington’s program and others like it.

According to the ABA Journal, the requirements to become an LLLT in Washington are significantly less onerous (and expensive) than those to become a lawyer.  An LLLT needs only an associate’s degree, and the full LLLT curriculum is available from community colleges.  Instead of the formal education required of lawyers, an LLLT must spend 3,000 hours doing law-related work under the supervision of a lawyer to become licensed.

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.  LLLTs need much less, and much less expensive, schooling, and the costs associated with both operating as an LLLT and regulating LLLTs will likely be lower than the costs associated with traditional legal practice.  This means that LLLTs should easily beat lawyers’ rates, and legal consumers should be able to pay these lower rates and, ideally, receive the help they need.

Sponsored

But it’s also easy to see how this could be a blow to the present-day legal profession with its hordes of underemployed lawyers.  A commenter on the ABA Journal article wrote (using the handle “Massively bad idea”): “As if it isn’t hard enough for people who went to law school to find a job – now we’ll make it so that people who didn’t go to law school can compete with them.”  Indeed, it seems like the sort of work that LLLTs would be doing is precisely the sort that employment-needy recent grads could do in a pinch.

And it’s also easy to see how programs like Washington’s could do a poor job closing the access-to-justice gap.  There aren’t many barriers to entry for LLLTs, and ease of entry increases the potential that many LLLTs will give very, very bad advice and counsel that could do real harm.  Plenty of associate’s-degree holders are plenty smart and capable of providing sound legal advice, but then again, I’d bet that plenty aren’t.  And while plenty of lawyers are inept too, they must nevertheless possess some degree of intelligence and legal reasoning not to have been weeded out by law school and the bar exam.

Regardless, the LLLT program is an interesting approach to a real problem, and I’ll be watching to see what comes of it.

And there are a couple of other interesting takeaways from this program.  First, if you’re considering law school because you want to provide direct services to people who need them, maybe you should reconsider taking on six figures of debt and become an LLLT instead.  And, second, if you’re a new attorney who’s struggling for clients, know that they’re out there.  They might not be able to pay well, but they are out there.  Find them and maybe you can help close the access-to-justice gap — you just might have to outcompete the LLLTs.

Sponsored

Sam Wright is a dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding-heart public interest lawyer who has spent his career exclusively in nonprofits and government. If you have ideas, questions, kudos, or complaints about his column or public interest law in general, send him an email at PublicInterestATL@gmail.com.

Topics

, , , ,