Category: News Feeds

COVID-19 and the resulting stay-at-home orders put an unexpected halt to hiring at many law firms and in a number of practice areas. However, not all firms and practice areas put lateral hiring on hold.

Take the Boston market, where a handful of firms are still pushing full-force ahead. And even among those that have slowed or ceased associate hiring, most are still hiring at the partner level. We will take a look at the numbers for the Boston lateral market now that we are three months into this unchartered pandemic era to see more concretely where lateral hiring is headed.

Associate Hiring: An Overview

On the associate hiring side, firms generally fall into one of three categories:

1. The firm conducted layoffs or furloughs and/or reduced associate salaries. If they are hiring at all, they are hiring only extremely selectively in COVID-specific practice areas, such as bankruptcy and restructuring, insurance coverage litigation, general litigation, labor and employment, and healthcare law.
2. The firm avoided layoffs and salary cuts but is playing it very safe. They are hiring only for COVID-specific practice areas.
3. The firm is busier than ever and confident as to its financial stability. The firm recognizes that this uncertain time offers a unique opportunity to seek out top talent with less competition than usual from other firms. They are moving forward with pre-COVID hiring needs, conducting Zoom interviews and even onboarding remotely. But even these firms are less likely right now to consider more “opportunistic” résumés, i.e., for practices or seniorities not covered by a concrete job opening.

In Boston, there are currently active associate openings primarily for the following practice areas: restructuring, general finance, borrower-side debt finance, general corporate/private equity, life sciences transactional, patent litigation, patent prosecution, insurance/reinsurance and insurance coverage litigation, cybersecurity and privacy, tax, and healthcare. These are all openings that have been posted since March 15^th.

Partner Hiring: An Overview

Economic ups and downs may force firms to reconsider their short- and medium-term strategic needs. So-called COVID-related practices may be more in demand these days. But given the right book of business, law firms will consider partners in any economy if that partner’s practice fits the firm’s strategic needs. Partners look to move in good economies and bad. Billing rate pressures are in fact driving many partners to consider a move these days to a firm where there is more rate flexibility. The lateral partner market is historically much stronger than the associate market during recessions. And our experience to date shows this trend is holding true in this COVID-19 era. 

Partner and Associate Hiring: The Numbers

Let’s take a look at the numbers^[1] to get a clearer idea of what is happening in the current Boston legal market:

• Between March 15, 2020 and June 15, 2020, a total of 33 partners and 62 associates were hired into Boston firms. (The numbers show 22 partners and 39 associates for this time period if we’re looking only at Am Law 200 firms.)

Let’s look at the top three practice areas for lateral hiring:

• Corporate: there were a total of 10 partners and 11 associates hired into Boston firms’ corporate groups between March 15, 2020 and June 15, 2020.
• Litigation: there were a total of 11 partners and 23 associates hired into Boston firms’ litigation groups between March 15, 2020 and June 15, 2020.
• Intellectual Property: there were a total of 5 partners and 11 associates hired into Boston firms’ IP groups between March 15, 2020 and June 15, 2020.

What does this all mean? Not all that much unless we compare it to the same period last year:

• Between March 15, 2019 and June 15, 2019, a total of 29 partners and 102 associates were hired into Boston firms. Of these hires, 5 partners and 30 associates were in corporate, 10 partners and 28 associates were in litigation, and 4 partners and 17 associates were in IP.

So what does this tell us? It tells me that the associate hiring market has slowed significantly, down 39 percent over the same period last year, but the lateral partner market is still strong.

Associate Hiring: New Searches

Hires made between March 15 and June 15 were for the most part already in process before March 15, before we understood the consequences of COVID-19 for the economy. What about new associate job postings?

New associate job postings in Boston (from our internal Lateral Link database, including published and non-published searches) were as follows:

• 82 new jobs from June 15, 2019 to September 15, 2019
• 55 new jobs from September 15, 2019 to December 15, 2019
• 50 new jobs from December 15, 2019 to March 15, 2020
• 32 new jobs from March 15, 2020 to June 15, 2020

Comparing only published active job openings for associates in Boston, we see 33 jobs on March 15, 2019 versus 5 jobs on March 15, 2020.^[2]

These new postings are still not 100% indicative of the state of the market. They do not take into account that most firms will consider résumés where there is not a specific job opening. But as I mentioned earlier, firms’ willingness to consider opportunistic submissions for associates has dropped to close to nil during the pandemic.

I have not included partner openings here as firms rarely publish partner hiring needs. A firm’s interest in a partner candidate often has more to do with a partner’s book of business than a specific need, or where there is a specific need, the firm will often engage a recruiting firm “offline” for a more measured and effective approach to the recruiting process. Here at Lateral Link, we work with many law firms in this way.

Conclusions

The Boston lateral market has been booming in recent years. A number of top international firms have opened new offices in Boston recently, and work in the life sciences and tech arenas in particular is abundant. Firms’ specific lateral partner needs are influenced by economic pressures. But there are always needs, when the book of business is right.

We expect the lateral market for Boston law firm partners to be stronger than ever in the coming months. Firms with the stability and the means are taking advantage of the uncertainty experienced by some other firms to bring on top talent and reach their strategic goals.

While associate hiring in Boston has slowed significantly, some firms are still hiring, especially in certain practice areas. This can be a great opportunity to move to a more financially stable firm and work on the most complex and sophisticated matters. We will keep a close eye on the numbers in hopes that the associate market across all firm ranks rebounds soon and quickly.

If you are a law firm or boutique or company of any size considering engaging a legal recruiter to assist with specific searches or for general hiring consultations, I’d love to connect. If you are a partner, counsel or associate who is considering a move, I’d be happy to have a conversation about specific firms that are hiring. I’m also always happy to set up an introductory call if you’re not looking to move in the near future but would like to stay in touch with a legal recruiter for legal market updates and career guidance going forward.

Please reach out to me at agordon@laterallink.com or find me on LinkedIn. I look forward to hearing from you.

[1] All the statistics cited in this post except those specifically noted as coming from the Lateral Link internal database were taken from the Leopard Solutions database. It is possible not all firms report data and that there may be a delay in reporting as well.

[2] Unfortunately, comparable data from our internal database for the March 15, 2019 to June 15, 2019 period is not available.

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. This post is by Abby Gordon, Senior Director at Lateral Link, who works with attorney candidates on law firm and in-house searches, primarily in Boston, New York, and Europe.

Prior to joining Lateral Link, Abby spent seven years as a corporate associate with Cleary Gottlieb, focusing on capital markets transactions for Latin American clients in New York and for the last five years for European clients in Paris. A native of Boston, Abby holds a J.D., cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. in government and romance languages, magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College. Abby also worked with the International Rescue Committee as a Fulbright Scholar in Madrid, Spain. She is a member of the New York, Massachusetts and Maine Bars and is fluent in French and Spanish (and dabbles in Portuguese and Italian). You can view additional articles by Abby here.

---

Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices worldwide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click here to find out more about us.

In about two months’ time, law schools across the country will be reopening their doors in some way, shape, or form, welcoming back students after the pandemic forced them to move to remote learning environments. But one school won’t be participating in this joyous reunion with students. In a surprise announcement yesterday afternoon, the administration told students and alumni that the school will never reopen its doors ever again.

Which law school is shuttering under the weight of “financial distress”?

Back in early February, before the pandemic truly took hold, we reported that Concordia University School of Law — one of the only law schools in the country with a perfect ultimate bar pass rate — intended to cease operations, effective at the end of the semester. Thankfully, Concordia was able to find a parent school that would have allowed the school to remain open, but according to Interim Dean Latonia Haney Keith, those plans fell apart. The Idaho Press has more information:

The eight-year-old Boise law school had hoped to stay open through a transfer the School of Law to Concordia St. Paul. The universities in February signed a letter of intent to transfer but were “unable to consummate the transaction,” according to a press release issued Thursday on behalf of the Boise law school.

Latonia Haney Keith, the Boise school’s interim dean, told the Idaho Press that due to pending litigation, she could not disclose many additional details about the reason for the closure. She said the process to transition to Concordia St. Paul was supposed to be complete by the end of the month, but due to “financial distress” at Concordia University-Portland, the process couldn’t continue. She said the closure was out of school officials’ control.

“It’s incredibly disheartening for us today,” Haney Keith said in an interview with the Idaho Statesman. “This was unforeseen and inexplicable in many respects. We were expecting to fully transition to St. Paul, but it unraveled in such a surprising way.”

Upon Concordia’s closure, more than 100 law students will be left without a school. Luckily, the University of Idaho is stepping in to help, and will reportedly admit 145 rising second- and third-year students. This is not the first time Idaho has given aid to Concordia. In 2014, when the school was having accreditation issues, Idaho accepted 53 of Concordia’s students. Now, Idaho hopes to do even more.

“At the time, that was the largest single transfer of law students in the history of education,” Jerry Long, dean at the University of Idaho College of Law, said by phone. “Here, we’re talking about 145 students.” …

“If we can step up and help them out, that’s really what I hope to do,” Long said. “We’ll do everything we can to make it happen, but it’s definitely going to be a challenge.”

Best of luck to everyone at Concordia Law who just found out that they won’t have a law school to go back to come summer’s end.

Boise’s Concordia law school to close [Idaho Press]
Concordia law school hoped to add new affiliate to stay open. That plan has now unraveled. [Idaho Statesman]

Earlier: Law School Left In The Lurch After University Unexpectedly Decides To Close Its Doors

---

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

For all the chaos of these times, at least some things remain comfortably predictable. The business world has fundamentally changed in the past three months, yet, same as always, the legal industry drags its feet and pretends things will soon go back to how they used to be.

Home Office Is The New Office

Consider the new white-collar normal, working from home. What started purely as a safety measure is turning into a permanent change in how people do business. Tech industry leaders like Facebook and Twitter have announced that many of their employees may work remotely permanently, even after the COVID-19 crisis has subsided. Other industries are following suit. A recent Gartner survey found that nearly 75% of CFOs surveyed are planning to permanently shift at least 5% of their workforce to remote work once the virus is under control. About 50% plan to shift 10% or more. The promise of widespread telework that we’ve been talking about since the 1990s is finally arriving.

The justifications for a robust work-from-home movement are the same as they ever were. Studies have long shown that employee productivity doesn’t take the hit that many law firm partners might expect. In many cases, productivity actually increases without the distractions, busywork, and commute times that are part and parcel of the in-office experience. Remote working options increase worker satisfaction and increase productivity. What’s not to love?

And that’s just the employee-facing side of things. From management’s perspective, the balance sheet benefits can be huge. Businesses around the globe are already shrinking their physical footprint. It’s a lot cheaper to soak up the one-time cost of a laptop, phone, and desk for at-home workers than it is to pay rent to house them every single month. Remote work also greatly increases the candidate pool for new positions, which could be great news for people living in economically struggling regions with low costs of living. The remote-working revolution may be as much a boon for worker happiness and mobility as it is for corporate bottom lines.

Yet many law firm leaders I’ve spoken to are itching to get everyone back in the office as soon as possible. This astounds me. Lawyers are uniquely suited to work from anywhere. We’re not manufacturing widgets in a shop here. We sell advice, Word docs, and PDFs for a living. We can generate those as easily in a home office as we can in a downtown high-rise. When we have to meet in person or go to court, we still can — but that doesn’t require a daily in-office presence.

The Reverse Goldilocks Zone

Let’s go even more fundamental — how is the business world handling its cashflow? Many, if not most, companies are working hard to increase collections, decrease delinquency, and build a war chest to survive the coming months. Even as lending rates remain at new historic lows, cash will likely remain king until the market’s volatility calms. There are serious discussions to be had about the ideal trade-offs between reinvestment in the company and maintaining high liquidity, but the discussions are at least occurring.

At least they’re occurring in the normal business world, where management’s interests in keeping a company strong are usually weighted more heavily than ownership’s interests in taking cash out of the till. In small businesses where ownership and management are tightly held in just a few hands, ownership generally needs to keep their chief asset, the company, humming. If they don’t, they risk killing the golden goose. In large public businesses, ownership is often dispersed among a large class of shareholders. At firms around the globe, some shareholders do not care one whit about the health of the company over their own returns. Instead, the management team entrusted with keeping the company going will hopefully strike the right balance between reinvestment in the company and payout to ownership.

Many law firms, on the other hand, exist in a strange middle space. Law firm equity partners have the same motivations as everyone to make as much money as possible. But equity partners are also typically in demand and have mobile books of business, which means they may not worry as much about keeping the lights on once they’ve gotten their payout. They also may have the votes and political clout to prioritize short-term payouts over long-term reinvestment that may not benefit them directly.

We see these competing incentives reflected in the typical law firm fiscal model: strip the firm’s accounts dry on the last day of the fiscal year, distribute everything left over to the equity members, and start again fresh at midnight. This model allows for some reinvestment within the firm during the fiscal year, but also incentivizes keeping cash in the bank so it can end the year in partners’ pockets. This model has kept the peace between the competing interests of ownership and management in many firms for decades. It may be a significant hindrance to smart business survival in the wake of the coronavirus, though, where the need to have cash on hand to survive a potential recession or depression is becoming paramount. If firms want to survive the COVID-19 crisis, they may need to reformulate their basic financial model. Yet how many equity partners, in the face of all this uncertainty, want to cut back their take-home pay to keep the larger firm healthy?

The Consequences Of Doing Nothing

Hesitance to embrace change is nothing new to our industry. It’s perhaps easy to understand why there’s so much fear about changing what is, for many, the fundamental concept of how a law firm functions. Some management teams may fear losing the sense of community and camaraderie they’ve built up. Some may not want to spend the money and do the hard work when it seems like none of their peers is doing the same thing.

That’s the thing about adapting to the times: you choose to make it happen or you don’t, but the world keeps on changing around you regardless. You either grow and survive, or you wither and die. Fear is understandable, but if you want to be afraid of anything, be afraid of the consequences of doing nothing. The broader business world is moving with the times. We can’t afford to be left behind.

---

James Goodnow is an attorney, commentator, and Above the Law columnist. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and is the managing partner of NLJ 250 firm Fennemore Craig. He is the co-author of Motivating Millennials, which hit number one on Amazon in the business management new release category. As a practitioner, he and his colleagues created a tech-based plaintiffs’ practice and business model. You can connect with James on Twitter (@JamesGoodnow) or by emailing him at James@JamesGoodnow.com.

You would think, given how much effort they’ve put in to making as many Americans as possible eligble to pay fees to hedge and private equity fund managers, Jay Clayton and who he (probably futilely) hopes will be his soon-to-be-former colleagues (a group not generally given to great efforts) think very highly of those managers. Annoyingly, however, everywhere the SEC looks in those industries, it keeps finding things it doesn’t like, over and over. With every examination and every on-site inpection, new examples of the same deficiencies just keep popping up: nine different kinds of common conflicts of interest, four different kinds of common fee and expense issues, even two common kinds of insider-trading lapses.

* A federal judge has dismissed a prisoner’s lawsuit asking for permission to marry Ivanka Trump. This guy might want to pursue President Trump’s other daughter, since it seems like he could use a lawyer. [CBS News]

* A Wyoming attorney has been censured by a state bar for failing to file a bankruptcy petition 11 months after being instructed by a client to do so. [Bloomberg Law]

* The Trump family has lost a court battle to halt the publication of a tell-all book written by President Trump’s niece. [CNBC ]

* President Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan has said that he would not necessarily recuse himself from probes involving the president’s associates. [Washington Post]

* An Assistant U.S. Attorney is suing the NYPD for wrongful arrest. These officers messed with the wrong person. [New York Post]

---

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

According to the ACLU, which American city is the largest to ban face recognition?

Hint: Yesterday, Boston (the second largest city to ban the tech) lawmakers voted to ban the technology because of studies showing it is inaccurate in identifying people of color. Boston Councilor Ricardo Arroyo said, “It has an obvious racial bias and that’s dangerous. But it also has sort of a chilling effect on civil liberties. And so, in a time where we’re seeing so much direct action in the form of marches and protests for rights, any kind of surveillance technology that could be used to essentially chill free speech or … more or less monitor activism or activists is dangerous.”

See the answer on the next page.

So today is Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s birthday. Happy birthday to the first Hispanic Latina Justice! Her birthday comes on a day that pushes her jurisprudence — and that of the entire “left” of the Supreme Court — into stark relief.

As many Court watchers are aware, today the decision in Department of Homeland Security vs. Thuraissigiam was released. It was a 7-2 decision denying habeas corpus and due process relief to immigrants, with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer concurring in the decision. That’s right, two of the more supposedly staunchly liberal members of the Court agreed with the administration, while Sotomayor penned a pointed dissent.

This comes right after Sotomayor’s concurrence in DHS v. Regents where she alone refused to dismiss the equal protections concerns of DACA recipients, and well, it really makes you wonder who deserves to be lionized as the liberal anchor of the Court, as a contemporaneous chat with my colleague, Joe Patrice reveals.

And I was not alone in this opinion.

It’s become increasingly clear if liberals want a quick gut-check to see just how bad a decision is, they need to see where Sotomayor voted. And yet, RBG remains the cultural touchstone for what it means to be a liberal. But we know she isn’t perfect, far from it. (Though I think we can all admit that “when there are nine” is a bad ass quote.) For her birthday, I want more cultural ephemera celebrating Sotomayor. I’m here for the Sonia hoops or nail polish. And yes, t-shirts and posters and laptop stickers and all the trinkets that get churned out for RBG. It’s high time pop culture pays attention to who is really holding down the Court.

---

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

The legal industry is at a tipping point when it comes to capitalizing on legal analytics to provide better and more efficient legal services. LexisNexis, a leading provider of legal analytics tools, recently commissioned the 2020 Legal Analytics Study, in partnership with ALM Intelligence, to explore the current use of legal analytics in the legal industry and the benefits it offers law firms. The study surveyed 163 large law firm professionals in December 2019 to uncover the industry’s views on the adoption and application of legal analytics.

We recently sat down with Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of LexisNexis North America, to discuss the results of the study, current trends in legal analytics, and what we can expect to see in the legal analytics arena going forward.

What are some of the biggest takeaways from the 2020 Legal Analytics Study?

The results from this year’s study clearly show we’ve reached a tipping point in the legal analytics adoption curve among Am Law 200 firms, driven by competitive pressures, the expectations of corporate clients and the need to control costs. An overwhelming majority of law firms — 70% — recognize these benefits and have adopted legal analytics, while 90% of analytics users agree that legal analytics make them better legal practitioners. This survey validates what we’ve known for quite some time — that law firms should provide access to the legal analytics tools their professionals value and desire to remain competitive.   

Are more firms today adopting analytics? If so, what’s driving the increase?

We’re seeing a rapid increase in the adoption of analytics, and we expect to see that increase continue. Of the lawyers whose organizations have access to legal analytics, 75% reported seeing usage increase in the last 12 months and 92% said they intend to increase their use of legal analytics in the next year.

Client expectations and competitive pressures were cited as the top two drivers of legal analytics adoption among large law firms. Of the users surveyed, a vast majority said legal analytics were encouraged or looked upon favorably by clients. It’s an extremely powerful thing for legal professionals — and their clients — to be able to look at a thorough analysis of how long it would take a case to reach summary judgment and what the potential damages would be before pursuing a legal strategy. It makes the intrinsic value of analytics and how it can improve the knowledge, competitiveness, and efficiency of legal professionals and their law firm clear.

What benefits do legal analytics offer?

The overwhelming majority of lawyers who currently use legal analytics say it makes them better, more efficient, and more effective practitioners. And even the majority of those who don’t currently have access to the technology, recognize its value and believe that it would make them better lawyers if they used it. 

The cited top benefits of legal analytics include increases in an organization’s knowledge, competitiveness and efficiency, as well as a better ability to gain competitive insights, strategically assess and price cases and pursue new business, but I don’t think it stops there. The ability to take massive amounts of data and truly pinpoint exact strategies or language that can make or break a case is a revolutionary shift for the legal industry. Being able to walk into court and know how your judge has ruled on similar cases in the past and what language or cases he cited in his rulings gives you a huge competitive advantage that is only accessible with advanced language analytics.

How can law firms get the most out of legal analytics?

Analytics have useful applications in both the practice of law and the business of law. In the practice of law use-cases, lawyers value the ability to gain competitive insights on other players in litigation, the knowledge to better assess cases and the ability to have a greater footing for determining case strategy.

What was really interesting is how business of law use-cases for legal analytics have grown over the past year, expanding beyond its original function as a litigation tool. This clearly indicates that law firms recognize that legal analytics can do so much more for their organizations, such as pricing legal matters, gathering competitive intelligence for new business, or simply demonstrating a competitive advantage to clients.

How is LexisNexis changing the legal analytics game?

The legal industry’s most groundbreaking, innovative, and impactful analytics solutions reside on our flagship Lexis Advance platform, enabling attorneys to do their work more efficiently, provide better client counsel, and make more informed business decisions in today’s hypercompetitive environment. Additionally, through sophisticated tools like Context and Lex Machina, we’re helping lawyers across the industry make the most of the analytics capabilities available today. 

As the leader in legal analytics, we couldn’t be happier to see more law firms, attorneys, and other legal professionals adopting these tools and finding new ways for the technology to add value to their business and profession.

What should we expect to see in the realm of legal analytics in the future?

Based on the positive survey results and our own in-market intelligence, we’re expecting continued growth and adoption of legal analytics in the years to come. Nearly all law firms that use legal analytics expect to increase or expand its use in the next year, and a solid number of firms that don’t use it plan to invest in legal analytics over the next two years. 

The legal analytics tools available today offer data-driven attorneys the ability to know things that were previously unknowable, and we only expect those abilities to increase in the future as the technologies become more powerful and refined.

What impact has COVID-19 had on analytics use? Are you seeing an uptick in analytics usage and adoption? 

As one would imagine, the federally mandated COVID-19 restrictions in March disrupted many of the established processes that had been driving the practice of law — including the use of analytics. But once attorneys adjusted to working from home, we saw a tremendous uptick in usage and adoption of analytics. 

For instance, our language analytics platform, Context, recorded its highest usage ever in April 2020, up more than 50% above its previous high-usage record in February and spiking nearly 80% from March. The increase came primarily from the large law and academic segments and included a very notable increase in the same users coming back repeatedly. Similarly, Lex Machina’s Legal Analytics, whose growth had been trending upward in late February, saw a near 25% drop in usage in the first half of March but by the end of April, usage had rebounded to within a few basis points of its February high. Overall, this rebound demonstrates the importance of analytics to today’s legal practice and its ability to deliver critical information and insights under the most challenging of circumstances.

---

Discover the value of legal analytics from LexisNexis: 

Context on Lexis Advance® is a language analytics solution that applies machine learning and natural language processing across tens of millions of legal and news documents, including judicial opinions, expert testimony, and company profiles to extract and visualize analytical insights that can help litigation attorneys find the language and citations most persuasive to a judge or court, identify the best expert witness, or identify correlations among news events, litigation and financial performance for a company. Request a free trial.  

Lex Machina is the only legal industry solution that provides outcome analytics to help you anticipate case timing, resolutions, damages, remedies, and findings. Lex Machina combines natural language processing and human expertise to analyze tens of millions of court dockets and documents. Request a demo.

Sociologist Rebecca Sandefur is one of the world’s leading scholars on access to justice. Professor at the Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University, she is also a faculty fellow at the American Bar Foundation, where she founded and leads the Access to Justice Research Initiative. In 2018, she was named a recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant” for her work promoting an evidence-based approach to increasing access to justice for low-income communities. 

In the wake of Washington state’s decision to sunset its pioneering Limited License Legal Technicians program, I ask Sandefur about that program, which she evaluated in a 2017 report, and about other programs in which those other than lawyers provide legal assistance. 

We also discuss access to justice more broadly, including the scope and causes of the justice gap, the obstacles to bridging it, the impact of race and class on access to justice, what works and what does not to close the gap, and why regulatory reform and technology are essential to enhancing access to justice. 

NEW:

Comment on this show: Record a voice comment on your mobile phone and send it to info@lawnext.com.

We are now on Patreon! Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.