This will be my last post here at the Law21 blog for awhile. It’s also my first post here in a while, and these two are connected. Today, I’m launching a Substack newsletter that will effectively replace this blog. This is a pretty major change for me, and I feel I owe you an explanation of […] The post Taking a new path forward appeared first on Law21 ..read more

Requiring an aspiring lawyer to earn a law degree before they can begin the lawyer licensing process is an unnecessary and unfair barrier to entering the legal profession. The requirement should be dropped. That’s (probably) the most controversial proposal in the report I submitted to the Law Society of British Columbia, which recommended the adoption […] The post Why competence-based licensure would make the law degree unnecessary appeared first on Law21 ..read more

You might have been wondering what I’ve been up to lately, or why I’ve written so little here in the past several months. Okay, you weren’t wondering about that at all, but the answer is this: I’ve been immersed in a major project for a Canadian legal regulator that I’ve had to keep under wraps […] The post A competence-based lawyer licensing system in British Columbia appeared first on Law21 ..read more

When your average baseball fan goes to a ballgame these days, invariably he grumbles about the expense — $50 tickets, $15 beers, $9 hot dogs, and so forth. “It’s those greedy players,” he complains to the guy next to him. “They make millions of dollars, so the club has to charge high prices for everything. […] The post The associate salary deception appeared first on Law21 ..read more

I want you to concentrate. Cast your mind back. Try to recall what life was like in the Before Times. Do you remember … The Commute? Way back, before the pandemic, many of us would leave our homes early in the morning and travel to our collective workspaces. Then, when we were finished doing all […] The post The intentional law office appeared first on Law21 ..read more

Welcome news last week out of Oregon, where the state Supreme Court unanimously “approved in concept” two alternative pathways to lawyer licensure that don’t involve writing the bar exam. The potential new routes to bar admission were proposed in the July 2021 report of the Oregon State Board of Bar Examiners’ Alternatives to the Bar […] The post The way we’ve always done it is wrong appeared first on Law21 ..read more

Earlier this month, I was fortunate to appear on the closing panel at the International Conference of Legal Regulators‘ 2021 Virtual Conference. The premise of our panel was that regulatory innovations are taking place in many different countries, and we should decide whether this is a good thing or not. I was the last of […] The post The question every legal regulator needs to answer appeared first on Law21 ..read more

Think about these two questions for a moment: 1. What would you want to know about a person before agreeing they should be allowed to become a lawyer? 2. What would you want to know about a person before agreeing they should be allowed to remain a lawyer? How would you answer them? These are […] The post Defining lawyer competence appeared first on Law21 ..read more

Almost exactly three years ago, when hardly anyone was talking about a pandemic, I wrote about the California State Bar’s brand new Access Through Innovation In Legal Services Task Force, of which I remarked: The chances that California’s task force will result in fundamental reform to law firm ownership rules in the United States are […] The post The legal regulation revolution appeared first on Law21 ..read more

I was happy to contribute an article to the latest issue of leading European legal industry magazine Legal Innovation and Technology Today. You should read the entire issue, which includes great pieces about DEI in the legal sector by Christy Burke, agile law firms by Chris Bull, and key corporate legal trends by Ari Kaplan. […] The post The future of legal sector reform is now appeared first on Law21 ..read more