New IAALS Report Offers Recommendations for Advancing Regulatory Reform Nationwide to Address Dire Gap in Legal Services for Majority of Americans

IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver, released Unlocking Legal Regulation: Lessons Learned and Recommendations for Launching and Sustaining Regulatory Reform. This new report highlights results and recommendations on how legal regulation innovation can address the continued and urgent legal services gap faced by the majority of Americans today.

“IAALS has been at the forefront of regulatory innovation through our Unlocking Legal Regulation work, and we’re deeply involved in what’s happening across the nation when it comes to this important movement,” said Jessica Bednarz, director of legal services and the profession at IAALS. “We’re now at a point where leaders in this space can draw upon their past experiences and share out what has worked and should be replicated, as well as what has not and needs further consideration.”

To this end, in October 2023, IAALS hosted its third regulatory-focused convening, bringing together a small group of leaders from states considering or implementing regulatory innovation to focus on the following three objectives:

• Objective 1: Learn from past and current regulatory innovation initiatives to develop an initial round of recommendations that supplement existing resources for launching and sustaining regulatory reform.
• Objective 2: Determine which stakeholder relationships the regulatory innovation community needs to further develop, and what resources and research still need to be developed to launch new regulatory innovation initiatives and to sustain existing ones. 
• Objective 3: Strengthen existing relationships—and develop new ones—so the group can continue to work together and build momentum as one regulatory innovation community.

The report outlines the convening topics and relevant discussion and lays out a set of 12 recommendations drawn from those discussions, covering stakeholder engagement, program structure and requirements, messaging, research and data, and other areas.

“Most importantly,” said Bednarz, “the recommendations apply to the entire spectrum of regulatory innovation—and don’t solely focus on sandboxes or alternative business structures, for example. And that’s critical because a multi-pronged approach to regulatory reform is the only way we can ultimately serve people across the entire legal services gap. It’s about the ecosystem of needs, which is broader than just income. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and.”

Exploring and implementing regulatory innovation can be overwhelming to states and each jurisdiction is different, requiring a unique approach. This report is intended to ease that challenge, with many of the recommendations applying—to some degree—across all efforts, providing a general framework of best practices for launching, evaluating, and sustaining regulatory reform.

“At IAALS, we don’t question the status quo for the sake of change alone, but for the sake of justice,” said Bednarz, “and our hope is that this report will help other leaders to do the same by advancing regulatory reform efforts in their jurisdictions to address the alarming gap in legal services for millions of people across the country.”