In the face of a yawning justice gap, the question for policymakers should not be whether to move forward with regulatory innovation, but how. As more and more states are answering this call, we are seeing the “laboratories of democracy” in action. And, we can begin to see how different choices may influence the resulting legal market developments.
Two key goals drive regulatory innovation efforts. The first is expanding the supply of legal services and increasing the diversity of that supply along numerous dimensions, including provider type, price point, access mechanism, and type of service. The second goal is consumer protection through regulation of new providers. To meet these goals, states are experimenting with three primary approaches to regulatory innovation.
Two states, Arizona and Utah, have embarked on regulatory innovations that relax longstanding restrictions on who can practice law and who can own law firms, in order to spur new approaches to delivering legal services. And a number of other states are considering whether to follow their lead. Yet key questions remain about what regulatory reforms can achieve. In a series of empirical studies of these efforts, the Rhode Center is exploring:
1. What types of innovation in legal services delivery models will different reform approaches generate?
2. Who will be served by those innovations?
Washington launched the Limited License Legal Technician program in 2015, aiming to provide competent, regulated, and reasonably priced legal services to moderate means Washingtonians with family law issues. By 2020, the Washington Supreme Court had soured on the program and voted to sunset it. Through interviews with key stakeholders and assessments of available public data, the Rhode Center explored a key question:
What have been the costs and benefits of this program so far?
There are multiple pathways to rethinking legal regulation. To assist states in regulatory innovation efforts, the Rhode Center has developed a process map for legal regulation that outlines seven key decision points:
