Innovation and Rules of Professional Responsibility
ABA President B. Lamm has created a new Commission on Ethics called Ethics 20/20 to review ethics rules and regulation of the legal profession in the United States in the context of a global legal services marketplace. Hearings will be held at ABA Meetings to get input from various interests on how to reform or modify the ABA Code to enable US law firms to remain competitive in an age where Internet technology is pervasive.
I have been invited by the Commission to testify and submit a statement at the ABA Mid-Year Meeting in Orlando, where the Commission is holding one of its first public hearings.
My statement will discuss the following topics:
- how the rules of professional responsibility function as a deterrent to innovation;
- issues relating to the unauthorized practice of law and the definition of "the practice of law;"
- legal referral concepts in the age of the Internet;
- state rules of professional responsibility that require a "physical" business office in order to practice law in that state;
- the potential for cloud computing;
- enabling the delivery of limited legal services online;
- law firm ownership structure as it relates to innovation in the delivery of legal services;
- and the eLawyering Task Force Recommended Guidelines for the Delivery of OnLine Legal Services.
I am looking for suggestions and ideas about other issues that relate to the delivery of online legal services and the rules of professional responsibility. Any ideas are welcome. Just comment on this blog.
One might want to add the business process improvement that is going on in many firms. Much of this is driven by economics, value challenges, and the inexorable pull of technology.
There are implications here for lawyering at the age of the internet and to professional responsibilities. Business and practice processes are optimized in response to technology and economics, but how these process are optimized may have an impact on the ability to comply with ethics rules.