Stanford, CA | September 24, 2025 – Two leading voices in legal innovation, Stanford Law School Professors David Freeman Engstrom and Nora Freeman Engstrom, have published a new edited volume: Rethinking the Lawyers’ Monopoly: Access to Justice and the Future of Legal Services. The collection, available open-source (and thus free to download) from Cambridge University Press, brings together renowned scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to provide a rigorous, timely analysis of the century-old lawyers’ monopoly over the delivery of legal services.
The book arrives at a moment when two powerful and cross-cutting forces are driving policymakers to question traditional restrictions on who can offer legal advice—and how law firms can be financed and organized. The first cross-cutting force is the yawning civil justice gap which, despite decades of calls for more pro bono and increased funding for legal aid, continues to impact millions of Americans every year. Second is the disruptive force of new, potent technologies, particularly generative AI, which has captured the attention of lawyers, courts, technologists, and advocates around the world. “The collision of these tectonic forces,” says David Freeman Engstrom, “is prompting the realization that change is necessary and inevitable—the only questions left are what this change looks like and how it can be brought into existence responsibly.”
Rethinking the Lawyers’ Monopoly attempts to give shape to these issues by reframing traditional narratives, incorporating empirical expertise, and drawing on insights from a broad range of stakeholders and academic disciplines. The book’s chapters diagnose the effects of the lawyers’ monopoly, introduce conceptual frameworks and viewpoints to ground reform efforts, and offer strategies for directing the imminent transformation of the legal field.
Key topics include:
- The politics and economics of an expanded legal services marketplace
- Deficiencies in the current state-level attorney discipline framework
- Consideration of the “public side” of lawyering
- The connection between racial bias in legal services markets and restrictive regulations
- The challenging market economics of providing low- and middle-income consumers with tech-based legal services
- Cautions from the medical field on corporate ownership and the integration of non-MD providers
- Lessons from the U.K. vision of digital justice and German legal tech market
- A proposal for a hybrid federal-state regulatory model
- Implications of litigation-driven reform based on First Amendment grounds
“After a century of stasis,” according to Nora Freeman Engstrom, “we are witnessing a revolution in legal services regulation. With this collection, we aim to sharpen the debate and steer the conversation toward real solutions for access to justice.”
Rethinking the Lawyers’ Monopoly is essential reading for law professors, regulators, legal tech leaders, policymakers, and anyone concerned with the future of the civil justice system.
About the Editors:
David Freeman Engstrom is the LSVF Professor in Law and Co-Director of the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford Law School.
Nora Freeman Engstrom is the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford Law School.
Contact:
For media inquiries, contact: legalprofession@law.stanford.edu
To access the book’s open-source chapters, visit Cambridge University Press: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/rethinking-the-lawyers-monopoly/EEBDFD78D1E5D018C9FB02746A8FE9FE
To pre-order a hard copy, visit Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Lawyers-Monopoly-Justice-Services/dp/1009528556