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Law Practice Management
services are provided. www.lawoncall.com advertises a per month subscription for unlimited phone calls and a set rate schedule for additional legal services based on years of experience.
In August 2022, the American Bar Association adopted Resolution 402 reaffirming Resolution 00A10F as follows:
The sharing of legal fees with non-lawyers and the ownership or control of the practice of law by non-lawyers are inconsistent with the core values of the legal profession. The law governing lawyers that prohibits lawyers from sharing legal fees with non-lawyers and from directly or indirectly transferring to non-lawyers ownership or control over entities practicing law should not be revised.
The full resolution is available by clicking here. The resolution was also adopted by the Illinois, New York and New Jersey State Bar Associations.
For further argument that nonlawyer owned law firms are not succeeding in their goal of providing increased access to justice see the October 19, 2022 journal article The Pitfalls and False Promises of Nonlawyer Ownership of Law Firms by Stephen P. Younger. The article discusses Arizona and the Utah experimental regulatory sandbox for Alternative Business Structures which runs through August 2027. Utah is currently the only other state to license Alternative Business Structures (although Washington D.C. does have a revised and more lenient version of Ethical Rule 5.4). Younger also discusses California and Florida’s exploration of non-layer owned law firms. Neither state has adopted any such provisions and the activity in these states in 2022 did not show any momentum for nonlawyer owned law firms in those jurisdictions.
It remains to be shown whether the 40 Arizona Alternative Business Structures are achieving the goal of increased access to justice and at what cost to the practice of law.
Alicyn M. Freeman is a shareholder with Broening Oberg Woods & Wilson P.C. in Phoenix AZ. She can be reached at: amf@bowwlaw.com.
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