Unauthorized Practice: Assessing Available Evidence

A debate is now raging concerning whether to relax the rules that govern the provision of legal services, to welcome nonlawyers into the fold. In recent years, roughly a dozen states have taken precisely this step, seeking to expand access to those currently priced out of the legal services marketplace. But in other places, reform efforts have stalled, derailed by claims that lawyers—and lawyers alone—have the training, education, and experience to supply high-quality assistance.

     The stakes of this debate are sky high: The legal profession is large and influential, courts are crucial, and the access-to-justice crisis at issue—the problem that has set states’ reform efforts in motion—is staggering. But the debate, itself, backstops on a question that is surprisingly straightforward: Can nonlawyers furnish legal services with competence and integrity? Or alternatively, to navigate our labyrinthian legal system, must one have comprehensive know-how of the kind only licensed lawyers possess?

            Wading into this debate, we compile the best evidence currently available. After canvassing nearly a century of research conducted at different times, in different places, and using a wide array of methodologies, we conclude that specially trained nonlawyers can, indeed, supply high-quality help. The notion that having a law degree is a necessary predicate to offering legal services with “integrity and competence” may be well ingrained. And, for those of us in the legal profession, it is surely convenient and comforting. But it is an idea that, when empirically tested, simply does not hold up.