An Interim Evaluation of Utah's Legal Regulatory Sandbox

In the fall of 2020, the Utah Supreme Court launched the nation’s first legal regulatory sandbox, allowing nontraditional legal service providers and business structures—including entities with nonlawyer ownership or nonlawyer legal practitioners—to offer legal services under a novel regulatory approach. The Sandbox was developed in response to long-standing challenges in the legal profession, including the widespread gap in access to affordable legal services. In the Sandbox, entities can test models for serving the public that would otherwise violate unauthorized practice of law (UPL) or ethics rules.

From the outset, the leaders involved in the launch of the Sandbox recognized that rigorous data collection and evaluation would be critical in understanding whether the Sandbox was meeting its goals. To that end, IAALS is conducting a robust evaluation throughout the pilot phase of the Sandbox, which is set to end in 2027. This series of reports presents findings from our interim evaluation, conducted over the first five years of Sandbox operations. We will publish updated evaluation findings once the pilot phase has concluded.

This report—Part 2 – Process Evaluation—presents a detailed picture of our process evaluation of the Sandbox. Process evaluation is a critical component of program evaluation that provides deep insight into how the program functions, which has implications for understanding the program’s outcomes. This report includes sections covering:

1. Our evaluation questions and situating the process component within the broader context of the evaluation.
2. The methodological approaches we employed.
3. In-depth discussion of the findings from this component of the Sandbox evaluation.

More information about our Utah sandbox evaluation.

How can we help? Consulting Inquiries: iaals@du.edu

This interim evaluation report series consists of four separate publications:

1. Sandbox Background and Evaluation Design Overview
   Presents important background and contextual information about the Sandbox along with an overview of the purpose and evaluative approaches used.
2. Process Evaluation
   Provides a detailed examination of how the Sandbox is designed and implemented, including a fully articulated logic model and a comprehensive review of changes to Sandbox policy to date.
3. Outcomes Evaluation (Expected November 2025) 
   Presents findings related to the outcomes and intended impacts of the Sandbox, including the entity authorizations, types of entities operating in the Sandbox, services provided, the quality of those services, the objectives of Sandbox entities, and additional insights gathered from their experiences.
4. Social Return on Investment (SROI) Analysis (Expected January 2026) 
   Provides empirically driven insights into the value the Sandbox has generated—including social value—in comparison with the amount invested.