Allied Legal Professionals
Project Status: Fostering Program Growth & Alignment around Best Practices
Establishing a new, affordable tier of legal professionals
Up and down the income scale, the legal needs of Americans are going unmet. The inability to afford a lawyer, among other factors, has led to ballooning rates of self-representation in our justice system, with over 70 percent of civil and family cases including a party without a lawyer. People in these situations are not only facing life-altering challenges alone—like child custody hearings or landlord/tenant issues—they also face disproportionately bad outcomes in their cases. Allied legal professionals hold a key to bringing more accessible and affordable legal help where it is needed most. Like nurse practitioners working alongside doctors, these legal professionals work alongside lawyers and are beginning to show great potential for lower-cost, excellent public service—and IAALS’ Allied Legal Professionals project is working to standardize and grow these successful programs nationwide.
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7
states with legal professionals serving the public
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14 M
middle class people in those states stand to benefit most
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11 %
of the U.S. population has access to allied legal professionals
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18
IAALS recommendations guiding program development and growth nationwide
The legal profession is failing to protect most people and it is clear that we can no longer rely on lawyers alone to be the answer. We need an ecosystem of legal professionals outside of lawyers, and ALPs are a critical component of narrowing the justice gap.
— Michael Houlberg
Director of Special Projects, IAALS
Prior to Licensed Legal Paraprofessionals, many people handled their cases alone with no affordable options for legal help, relying on internet searches to understand their rights—often leading to poor outcomes. Now we are here to help, and guide families in Colorado through these difficult matters.
— Laura Landon
LLP, Cox Baker Page & Bailey, LLC
Objectives
- To broaden understanding of the existing and proposed legal paraprofessional programs across the United States and in other countries, and the relative advantages and challenges that exist within them.
- To develop a national model for allied legal professionals based on best practices and research, from which states can draw when implementing or updating these programs.
Read our latest guidelines for creating reciprocity between states' allied legal professional programs.
The nurse practitioners of the legal profession
To hire a lawyer when faced with legal issues, most people either need considerable money or have so little money that they qualify for the limited legal aid available. The majority of people reside in the middle and are left out of the equation—what some call "The Missing Middle."
Enter: allied legal professionals.
While this new tier of legal services providers is spreading quickly across the country, these professionals have provided quality, ethical legal services for over a decade in certain places. Research shows that these licensed and regulated professionals who are not lawyers can represent clients as well as or better than lawyers in the limited matters they handle.
Further, research from IAALS’ Cases Without Counsel study suggests that people who need legal help are open to receiving it from qualified and authorized providers who are not lawyers:
It’s better to have someone that at least has some working knowledge of the system than trying to navigate it alone when you know nothing.
When you’re going through it, honestly, at that point, anybody—whether they’re a lawyer or not—if they’re qualified to give you that advice, you would appreciate it.
IAALS’ Allied Legal Professionals project is establishing national best-practice thinking around allied legal professionals programs by:
- Analyzing existing and proposed programs, the limited empirical research available, and similar experiences and programs from other countries and other professions (like nurse practitioners);
- Creating a framework for evaluating the relative advantages and challenges in the different models that exist;
- Convening diverse leaders and stakeholders to review the data and experiences, and establish recommendations and best practices; and
- Building a model for states to follow when considering and establishing allied legal professional programs in the future.
Through this project, we are working to standardize a new tier of legal professionals, which has the potential of increasing the number of people who can receive legal help. By promoting the need for and benefits of allied legal professionals—and by encouraging their growth and increased membership—we are making strides to close the justice gaps in our society.
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Our work is only possible through purposeful listening and collaboration with people across the country. Everyone, from legal system stakeholders to members of the public, plays a critical role in our innovations. Together, we jumpstart the groundbreaking and achievable solutions that will clear a path to justice for everyone.