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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Indiana State Bar Association has been taking a closer look at addressing the state’s attorney shortage, including the possibility of allowing some specially trained non-attorneys to do some legal work.
At its annual summit Thursday, one of the bar association’s breakout sessions,”Exploring Alternative Forms of Licensure,” allowed members to give their own feedback on what they think about having non-attorneys perform certain legal services and what those services might be.
Christine Cordial, ISBA’s director of justice initiatives, said Indiana is near the bottom of the U.S. in terms of attorneys per capita, with 2.3 lawyers per 1,000 residents.
“So there really is a gap for those who aren’t represented that need representation,” Cordial said.
More than half the state’s 92 counties are considered legal deserts, defined by the American Bar Association as having less than one lawyer per 1,000 residents.
Cordial said the association’s alternative licensure task force met for six months earlier this year and focused on allied legal professionals and looking at possible ways non-attorneys could obtain certifications and provide certain legal services.
A legal alternative licensure path in Indiana, if it occurs, would probably be comparable to a nurse practitioner model in health care, Cordial said.
She said the task force would take feedback from the summit’s breakout sessions, with the ISBA developing a plan of action for 2025.
At Thursday’s breakout session, facilitator Mark McSweeney of Raybourn Group International asked for responses to the question: “In thinking about the full spectrum of legal help and representation, what could be done by a properly trained non-lawyer?”
Abbey Riley, a Stoll Keenon Ogden PLLC attorney from Jeffersonville, said it was a complicated question because there are so many unknown factors in terms of what training would be required of a non-lawyer and qualifications they would need.
Riley said there were absolutely paralegals today she would trust to prepare a simple deed or wills.
“But they have attorney supervision,” Riley noted.
David Thompson, a deputy prosecutor with the Rush County Prosecutor’s Office, said he thought there were some legal services where there could be a path for non-attorneys, but he added that he wasn’t entirely sure which services those would be.
Thompson also questioned whether a non-attorney could make enough money to make it a viable job, depending on how alternative licensure was structured and what services could be provided.
Cordial noted that the Indiana Supreme Court also is looking at the issue of alternative forms of licensure through its Commission on Indiana’s Legal Future.
She said ISBA’s task force has looked at other states where alternative licensure has been allowed in areas such as family law and tenant/landlord eviction cases.
Cordial said some of those programs are overseen by those state’s supreme courts and laws had to be changed to establish them.
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A few years ago, the Indiana Lawyer and the IBJ ran an article about the declining enrollment in law schools. Some schools responded by cutting back staff to adjust to the new realities. But as I recall, the McKinney law school dean at the time said that because of tenured faculty to support, they would just lower the entrance requirements in the hopes of attracting more law school students. This sounded to me that to avoid layoffs, the school was going to dumb down the profession.
I think the problem about the lack of lawyers is being over blown and is being driven by the “legal deserts” issue. However, one of the main reasons Indiana has so many so-called legal deserts is that Indiana has more counties per square mile than any other state in the U.S. What this means is that we have a lot of small counties that are just not large enough – population wise – to support full time lawyers (or doctors or other types of professionals).
Using the term legal deserts makes it seems like people in smaller counties have no access to lawyers. But I would not believe that there is any place in IN where a person is not within 30 minutes of access to a lawyer albeit in another county. I live in Hamilton County where there are plenty of lawyers. But if the lawyer I want to see is in downtown Indy, it will take me 30 minutes or more to get to that lawyer.
I work with lawyers all over the U.S. Trust me when I say that the law profession has been and continues to be not just an overcrowded profession, but a vastly overcrowded profession and the number of lawyers per person ratio is a meaningless reference point.
This is a great point. I like that you break down the desert isssue. People often that the first data point but do not relate it actual facts on the ground.
I wonder how important it is that people with these alternative licenses make a full living at it. Looking at their example of wills etc, I can see myself, and many others, doing that work part-time, under the supervision of an attorney. Most of those things are templated now anyway.
Well, John C., you go take your Marion County lawyer into a county two over from Marion County, where maybe the local political affiliations take precedence over the proper administration of justice…see how that works out for you.
When there aren’t enough local lawyers, and you have to bring in legal counsel from out of town, you get what the legal world routinely refers to as “homered”. And I don’t mean you hit the ball over the fence. I mean the home town folks get favors you can’t buy (or may be they’ve already been purchased).