Ep 009: Bill Henderson on the Need to Change Non-Lawyer Ownership Rules

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Should legal ethics rules be changed to allow non-lawyer ownership of legal services providers? So controversial is the question that it was major news in July when the</span> <a href="http://www.calbar.ca.gov/"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">State Bar of California</span></a> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">voted to appoint a task force to study and make recommendations on the issue. What spurred the bar to take this action was the</span> <a href= "http://board.calbar.ca.gov/Agenda.aspx?id=14807&tid=0&show=100018904&s=true#10026438"> <em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Legal Market Landscape Report</span></em></a> <span style="font-weight: 400;">it commissioned from</span> <a href= "https://www.law.indiana.edu/about/people/bio.php?name=henderson-william-d"> <span style="font-weight: 400;">William D. Henderson</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, professor at Indiana University</span> <a href= "https://law.indiana.edu/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Maurer School of Law</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, who is Bob Ambrogi’s guest on today’s episode to discuss his findings and recommendations.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Henderson’s report makes the case that the legal profession is failing in its core mission of serving those who need legal services. The situation has brought the profession to an inflection point that requires action by regulators, Henderson says. The most effective regulatory action would be to ease rules on non-lawyer investment in order to allow lawyers to more closely collaborate with professionals from other disciplines, such as technology, process design, data analytics, accounting, marketing and finance.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“By modifying the ethics rules to facilitate this close collaboration,” Henderson writes in his report, “the legal profession will accelerate the development of one-to-many productized legal solutions that will drive down overall costs; improve access for the poor, worki