New Legal Role Designed to Address Affordability Issue
New Legal Role Designed to Address Affordability Issue
IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver, recently released an important new report, Allied Legal Professionals: A National Framework for Program Growth as part of its Allied Legal Professional project. The idea is to standardize a new tier of legal professionals that, if all goes well, will increase options for affordable legal help for the public.
“To hire a lawyer, people either need considerable money or have an income low enough to qualify for the limited legal aid available. The problem is that the majority of people in the middle class don’t fit into either of those categories, making access to legal services incredibly difficult,” says IAALS Director of Special Projects Michael Houlberg. “Even if every lawyer took on pro bono clients, it wouldn’t come close to addressing the need. And IAALS’ research shows that people who need legal help are open to receiving it from qualified and authorized providers who are not lawyers.”
IAALS lays out 18 recommendations, ranging from allowing for in-court representation without attorney supervision (#8) to authorizing ALPs to do transactional work (#4) to ensuring education and training requirements are not so burdensome as to defeat the goal of providing affordable legal help (#11). Notably, recommendation #1 is about titles.
“Thoughtful decisions on titles can help ALPs gain recognition as legitimate legal service providers,” IAALS explains, noting that terms such as “limited” or “paraprofessional” may signal that ALPs are not fully qualified.
Published July 20, 2023.
