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| Greetings, everyone! We have seen several exciting developments within the regulatory innovation community over the past two months. Right after our last newsletter went out, the Colorado Supreme Court authorized a new category of legal service providers—licensed legal paraprofessionals—to offer legal services in certain types of family law cases. Then earlier this month, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed into law SB 306, allowing paralegals who meet certain education, training, and licensure requirements to represent clients in eviction and divorce cases. On the conference front, the topic of regulatory reform made a few appearances. At the Stanford CodeX Conference last month, presenters on one panel noted the need for changes to the unauthorized practice of law statutes to allow technology companies to implement new solutions within the courts. A couple of weeks later, the legal aid and pro bono community gathered in Dallas, Texas for the NLADA/ABA Equal Justice Conference. One session spotlighted the Community Justice Worker Program in Alaska and another session, moderated by IAALS, highlighted Allied Legal Professionals more generally and also included a specific focus on the new program in Oregon. Allied legal professionals were also the focus of one of the panel discussions at the LSC Forum on Increasing Access to Justice in Washington, D.C. in late March. Finally, we are excited to announce that IAALS has kicked off its interim evaluation of Utah's sandbox. Rigorous data collection and evaluation is critical in understanding whether the regulatory sandbox is meeting its stated goals; to that end, IAALS is acting as an independent third-party evaluator for the sandbox. We anticipate publishing the interim evaluation in late 2023. This is part of a broader, longer-term evaluation effort that we expect to publish towards the end of the sandbox’s pilot period, which is set to expire in 2027. You can learn more about the objectives of the interim evaluation here. |
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Jessica Bednarz May 2023 |
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| May 18: "Don’t Scapegoat Robots to Protect the Lawyer Monopoly on Services" in Bloomberg Law May 9: "New LiRN project aims to bring access, equity, and innovation to Ontario’s legal library system" on Law Foundation of Ontario April 25: "CodeX Conference: Improving court access is as much about changing minds as changing technology" on Thomson Reuters April 17: "Innovative or invasive? Practitioners sound off on nonlawyer ownership of law firms" in Virginia Lawyers Weekly April 17: "Industry experts concerned about creation of mid-level veterinary position" on Denver7 April 5: "Colorado Supreme Court Approves Licensed Legal Paraprofessionals" on IAALS Blog April 4: "Becoming the Change: The Story of the North Carolina Justice for All Project" on IAALS Blog March 29: "New project aims to help Utahns access free legal advice on housing issues" in St. George News |
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From the Sandbox
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Some highlights from the latest activity report out of Utah's Office of Legal Services Innovation:
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Visit our
Knowledge Center to track what's happening around the country and the world when it comes to legal regulation, as well as submit information and sign up for notifications.
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IAALS is a national, independent research center dedicated to facilitating continuous improvement and advancing excellence in the American legal system. Our mission is to forge innovative and practical solutions to problems within the American legal system. |
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