A committee of the Florida Bar will explore reforms to expand legal services to state residents while protecting the profession’s core values.
The goal is to provide more and affordable legal services for Floridians and more work for Florida lawyers, while protecting the core values of the profession, the Florida Bar said in a statement.
“We’re getting more lawyers to more consumers and at the same time we’re getting more consumers the [legal] work they need while protecting them to ensure they’re getting quality work,” John Stewart, the committee's chair and 2019-20 Florida Bar president, said in describing the goal of the committee.
The Florida Supreme Court sanctioned the work of the Special Committee to improve the delivery of legal services last year.
“The charge from the Florida Supreme Court to the Special Committee was quite broad,” Stewart told the Florida Record in an email statement. “As a result, the Special Committee realizes it cannot properly and adequately tackle every identified issue as they are all important and all quite involved."
Instead, the committee is "thinking strategically and is setting an agenda that will allow it to thoroughly meet the requests of the Court in areas where the biggest impacts can be had while hoping to provide a roadmap as to how remaining issues might be addressed over time," Stewart said.
By the end of the summer, Stewart said there will be a focused approach and likely some ideas percolating out of the Special Committee to the Board of Governors and the Court at its next quarterly report.
Among the topics the committee might explore are referral fees and fee sharing/splitting, online service providers, lawyer advertising and non-lawyer providers of limited legal services, the Florida Bar stated.
Stewart said he is a big fan of pilot programs to try novel solutions.
The 10-member committee has received reports from committee that have studied in similar issues in California, Utah and Arizona.