Following on the heels of Utah, Arizona has approved sweeping changes to its rules regulating the practice of law. Once again, I’m pleasantly surprised that a state bar has gone for what I’ve long advocated: eliminating Rules 5.4 (the prohibition on attorney fee-sharing) and 7.2 (all sorts of unconstitutional limits on attorney advertising that predate Bates v. Arizona and which the ABA has inexplicably left in its Model Rules all these years).
Arizona has also opened up its legal monopoly a bit, creating a new license for “legal paraprofessionals.” I’m less sanguine about this change. Professional licensing remains a hurdle, and given our experience with a similar structure here in Washington state, I don’t see a vast market opening up.
It would have been far better had Arizona simply adopted another simple-but-far-reaching legal regulatory fix: narrowing the definition of “the practice of law” so that anyone could provide legal advice without needing a law license.
I know that’s an idea that sounds crazy to the ears of American lawyers, but it’s long been how things work in the UK, and it doesn’t seem to have harmed consumers or turned London’s solicitors penniless into the streets. It also makes a world of sense from a First Amendment perspective.
But hey, maybe next year? In any event, kudos to Arizona for taking a step I didn’t see coming until after I’d long hung up my law license.