Concluding Unlocking the Law
It’s been a great symposium. Many thanks to all of our outstanding contributors! This Symposium demonstrated blogging’s potential for productive intellectual discussion of an important current topic. We expect to have more such virtual conferences. We’ll have a wrap-up tomorrow of all of the posts here. I will offer some reactions after I’ve had time ... Concluding Unlocking the Law
Robert Crandall on It Is Time to Move Ahead with Deregulation
As we approach the end of this Symposium, I am struck by how much consensus exists on this subject. Of course, we are not conducting this exercise under the auspices of the ABA. Nevertheless, there is sufficient intellectual backing for a major push to begin the deregulation of legal services. Despite warnings that this is ... Robert Crandall on It Is Time to Move Ahead with Deregulation
Bruce Kobayashi on Copyrighting Law and Deregulation
My first post discussed one primary impediment to deregulating all the lawyers – which is the current system of legal regulation of lawyers. Even if one agrees that deregulating all the lawyers may be the ultimate goal, this still leaves the question of how best to achieve this result. Deregulating all the lawyers may not ... Bruce Kobayashi on Copyrighting Law and Deregulation
James Cooper on Antitrust Treatment of Expansive Interpretations of Ethical Rules
Attorneys earn excess rents by maintaining barriers to entering the legal profession. Legislation and regulation expanding the scope of work that only an attorney legally can perform is an obvious way in which attorneys attempt to expand or protect the market for their services. The FTC has a long history of trying to convince state ... James Cooper on Antitrust Treatment of Expansive Interpretations of Ethical Rules
Nuno Garoupa on Reforming Legal Professions In East Asia
The traditional narrative is that Asian jurisdictions have fewer lawyers than in the West because they are much less litigious societies; they don’t need lawyers! Recent evidence has suggested the causation is probably reversed; there are not enough lawyers to provide services to all potential litigants. Legal markets in East Asia were largely kept closed ... Nuno Garoupa on Reforming Legal Professions In East Asia
Renee Newman Knake on Corporations, the Delivery of Legal Services, and the First Amendment Part II
In Part I of this post, I identified a jurisprudential thread of cases that suggest corporations have a First Amendment right to own and invest in law practices for the delivery legal services. These decisions include NAACP v. Button, the union trilogy, and Bates v. State Bar of Arizona. Two recent cases shed light on ... Renee Newman Knake on Corporations, the Delivery of Legal Services, and the First Amendment Part II
Benjamin Barton on The Lawyer-Judge Bias
First, thanks to TOTM for organizing this symposium on a most timely and important topic. As computers and technology have revolutionized every aspect of human endeavor it is a particularly critical time to ask ourselves why 21st century law schools closely resemble the law schools of the late-19th century and why in court litigation would ... Benjamin Barton on The Lawyer-Judge Bias
Nuno Garoupa on Reforming Legal Professions in Europe
The European Commission, in particular the Directorate-General for Competition, has shown interest in promoting competition in the market for legal services since the early 2000s. Some countries such as the United Kingdom have taken this matter seriously. After a long review process, the British government has recently implemented a new regulatory set-up for legal services ... Nuno Garoupa on Reforming Legal Professions in Europe
George Leef on If We Want Creative Destruction, Destroy Unauthorized Practice Prohibitions
I may have missed it, but a topic that I don’t think has come up in the discussion thus far is unauthorized practice of law prohibitions. If we want to allow the free market’s discovery process to work – finding new modes of delivering services that serve consumers better than the old ones – we ... George Leef on If We Want Creative Destruction, Destroy Unauthorized Practice Prohibitions
Dan Katz on Legal Informatics, Corporate Law Firm Ownership and 21st Century Legal Education
A recent article argues “65 percent of today’s elementary aged kids may end up doing work that hasn’t even yet been invented.” This is a thought provoking number and it points to the disruptive nature of innovation and its impact on a variety of labor markets. There is a portion of the downturn in legal ... Dan Katz on Legal Informatics, Corporate Law Firm Ownership and 21st Century Legal Education
Walter Olson on Reform Law Schools, Don’t Sue Them
I’ve expressed doubts previously as to whether the simple model of licensure as incumbent protection adequately explains why our legal system (like all others I know of) limits who can be a lawyer, and in particular who can litigate in others’ interest. But if there’s one sector of the legal system that’s genuinely ripe for ... Walter Olson on Reform Law Schools, Don’t Sue Them
Larry Ribstein on The Future of Legal Education
What will legal education be like in the significantly deregulated world I’ve predicted in prior posts? I gave some thought to this question in my recent paper, Practicing Theory. There I pointed out that law schools, and particularly law faculty, have benefited from the same regulation that has benefited lawyers. Although lawyers now complain that ... Larry Ribstein on The Future of Legal Education
