In Search of Core Values

Abstract

A consensus appears to have emerged among American lawyers that globalisation and information technology are transforming the practice of law in fundamental ways. In particular, non-lawyers are increasingly involved in what has traditionally been defined as the practice of law. The legal profession has, of course, historically been granted a monopoly over the provision of any services that are deemed the practice of law. Thus, the participation by non-lawyers from various disciplines—accountants, consultants, business managers, financiers and information technology professionals—in the delivery of legal services has been not been welcomed with open arms by many lawyers. The issue of the extent to which nonlawyers may be involved in the delivery of legal services was first widely debated in 1999 and 2000, in connection with the American Bar Association’s (ABA’s) proposal to permit so-called Multidisciplinary Practices (MDPs), and renewed in the proposal by the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 to permit limited investments by non-lawyers in law firms, which came to be known as the Alternative Law Practice Structures (ALPS) proposal. In both of these instances, many lawyers were receptive to changes in the structure and regulation of the market for legal services, but their more traditionally minded colleagues expressed concerns—sometimes in fairly apocalyptic terms—about the erosion of the core values of the legal profession. While the ABA was debating proposals for regulatory changes permitting limited involvement by non-lawyers in the market for legal services, a few scholars have imagined a world in which the distinction between lawyers and non-lawyers breaks down entirely. Richard Susskind, in the United Kingdom, and Thomas Morgan, in the United States, have both hypothesised that lawyers may be going the way of wheelwrights, cordwainers or mercers (traders in fine cloths and silks), and that one day in the not-so-distant future we will consider the profession of lawyer as something to be studied historically, wonder