Bar ‘access to justice’ group says work has been mischaracterized

Members of a State Bar working group on access to justice have asked to meet with the chairs of the Legislature's judicial committees to explain why they believe their work is being mischaracterized.

Ten "volunteer members of the Closing the Justice Gap Working Group" sent a letter on Friday arguing that concerns over their ideas are overblown. One major rift between the bar and the lawmakers appears to be a disagreement about how well "regulatory sandbox" changes have worked elsewhere. Among the solutions the group members have discussed is allowing greater use of consumer legal software, and permitting attorneys to offer low-cost, flat-fee services.

A separate working group has been discussing a proposal to license paraprofessionals.

"In developing ideas on what a California sandbox could look like, we are not necessarily breaking new ground," the Closing the Gap group wrote. "These kinds of reforms have happened and are happening overseas in the UK, Australia, and Canada, and also close to home, including in Utah and Arizona."

The letter to Assemblyman Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley, and Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, also argued the status quo is unacceptable.

"As the bar's own 2019 Justice Gap study showed, 85% of Californians -- many of them your constituents -- get no help or plainly inadequate help for their legal problems," they wrote.

Stone and Umberg have told the Daily Journal they are working to bring legal services to more people. But they are skeptical of many of the ideas raised by the working group, as well as of proposals by the separate bar working group looking at expanding the use of paraprofessionals.

"Disputes that are less than $300,000 basically can't be resolved because they're too expensive," Umberg told the Daily Journal.

"We're constantly looking for more money for legal services," Stone said. "We have ongoing efforts to increase the number of people coming into the bar. We're going to continue to look at diversity."

In their letter, the working group proposed a meeting with the lawmakers early next month "at which we can directly address your questions and concerns, along with one or more of the pioneering legal service providers we referenced above," the letter concluded.

Neither legislators' office responded to a request for comment on the working group's request.

One ongoing theme raised by supporters of more aggressive regulatory proposals has been that expanding traditional legal aid is a partial solution.

The letter's lead signer was David Freeman Engstrom, co-director of the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession and a professor at Stanford Law School. He was traveling Monday and could not be reached for comment. But his staff shared a recent article he wrote on the Stanford website.

"Pro bono work and legal aid are critically important and socially valuable, but we can't rely on lawyers alone," Engstrom wrote. "The sad fact is that we can't lawyer our way out of the access to justice crisis. Even a doubling or tripling of pro bono hours won't put a dent in the problem. Instead, we need to consider adding entirely new models to meet Americans' civil justice needs."

Supporters of the State Bar's recent efforts have said critics misrepresented these ideas under discussion and conflated two separate efforts. The bar has a California Paraprofessionals Working Group that is distinct from the Closing the Justice Gap working group.

That group has been considering a program similar to Washington State's Limited Legal License Technician program. The Washington State Supreme Court voted to sunset the program last summer, though it allowed those already working under these licenses to continue.

But some also argue Washington's program was set up to fail. Licensees needed 3,000 hours of prior experience, though this was reduced to 1,500. This cut down the number of people eligible to participate and may have been at least partly a result of the structure of the Washington State Bar, which resembles that of the California State Bar before the California Lawyers Association was spun out as a separate organization.