On the 28th of June 2021, the Florida State Supreme Court’s Special Committee to Improve the Delivery of Legal Services (formulated by the Bar Board of Governors in November 2019), released their final report on changes in the legal sector. The report is calling for further study on allowing some nonlawyers to have an ownership interest in law firms and fee-splitting with non-lawyer entities, as well as calling for the creation of a legal “lab” to allow testing of innovative ways of providing legal services.
Former Bar President John Stewart, chair of the special committee, said the report is a recognition that the legal marketplace is changing and an attempt to allow the legal profession to help design and control those changes, which it now is largely unable to do. Saying: “This committee and this report is part of the profession and the Bar being the architect of the changes that are happening in the legal profession and the legal services marketplace, before outside forces dictate changes we may not want. We don’t think change should happen for the sake of change or because people think there should be change. We think change should happen because of data.”
The committees work focused on the risk of the development of an unregulated market where bad actors can take advantage of the public. This led to calls for the creation of a sandbox, whereby services can be tested to better understand public protection goals. Members of the committee also discussed the impact of reforms on low-income consumers, suggesting that regulatory reform could improve access to justice within the state.
The only firm recommendation of the report was the formulation of the legal lab sandbox project, the lab, titled the Law Practice Innovation Lab Program, under the committee’s conceptual outline would be overseen by a Supreme Court commission and would run for at least three years. It would be based on a similar program in Utah. Ontario, British Columbia, and the United Kingdom.
The report included calls for further study into a range of regulatory reforms including lawyer advertising; referral fees; fee-splitting; entity regulation; regulation of online service providers; and regulation of nonlawyer providers of limited legal services including paralegals and other limited licence professionals.
Read more about the report and access the full report here.