The State Bar of California Board of Trustees is facing mounting pressure over whether to create a regulatory “sandbox,” through which potentially game-changing legal industry reforms promoting access to justice could be tested.
This could be California’s last chance for a long while to enact changes that enable nonlawyer ownership of law firms and revised fee-sharing arrangements. These types of changes are in the works in Arizona, being tested in Utah through that state’s sandbox, and studied in other states.
Reform proponents criticized the board’s recent decision to delay its vote on the sandbox concept, a temporary regulatory structure designed ...