Florida is effectively abdicating a leadership role to improve and expand the delivery of legal services to keep up with technological advances, globalization and alternative business models.
That’s the view of attorney John Stewart, a former president of the Florida Bar who last year chaired the state Supreme Court’s Special Committee to Improve the Delivery of Legal Services. The committee’s recommendations – including proposals to test the concept of allowing non-lawyers to be law firm owners, fee splitting with non-lawyers and an expanded role for paralegals – were turned down in a March 3 letter from the state’s high court to the Florida Bar.
The bar’s Board of Governors in December urged the court to reject the committee’s key recommendations, concluding that data from other jurisdictions fails to prove they would result in consumer benefits. Despite following the board’s lead, the court called on the Florida Bar to develop a slate of alternative ideas to improve the delivery of more affordable legal services by Dec. 30 of this year.
Attorney John Stewart
| GrayRobinson, P.A.
“It does not seem that Florida has the appetite to lead on these issues, and that’s disappointing,” Stewart told the Florida Record.
Stewart’s committee suggested the court should create what it called a “regulatory sandbox” to test whether changes in law firm ownership, fee splitting and the role of paralegals could provide benefits for consumers and more efficiency in the delivery of services. Currently, around half of middle-income Americans and small businesses are not getting the legal services they need, he said.
“If we think we should be the architects of the change … then we should be the architects of whatever the legal marketplace looks like,” Stewart said, adding that the Florida Bar seems to be sticking with the status quo. “... The bar won’t promote anything that will be eye-opening or will move the needle.”
Despite Florida being a leader in legal reforms such as allowing cameras in the courtroom, it now seems to be allowing other states to take the lead in making changes that expand the availability of legal services, he said. Without that expansion, an unregulated black market could develop to offer such services, according to Stewart.
The state Supreme Court did express a willingness to adopt one of the special committee’s recommendations, however. That recommendation would amend the bar’s rules to allow nonprofit legal services providers to have non-lawyers on their boards of directors.