Deborah Rhode, a professor at Stanford Law School and at the Center on the Legal Profession, is giving a talk at Stanford Law on Thursday on the collision of legal ethical/professional rules & the new era of legal tech startups.
Here are the details:
Innovating within the Professional Monopoly: The Law of Unauthorized Practice Meets The Technology Boom
April 17, 2014
12:45 PM – 2:00 PMRoom 280B
Stanford Law School
As we are well aware, the startup boom has hit the legal industry in a major way with many new companies entering the market for delivery of basic legal services to everyday people and small businesses. Companies like Legalzoom, Responsive Law, LegalForce, and Rocket Lawyer each present a slightly different model of the new, technology-driven legal services platform. These innovations are changing the way regular people interact with the law and the way lawyers provide advice. But every company in this sector must consider how their business model fits within the well-established black letter law of each state forbidding the unauthorized practice of law. Professor Rhode will discuss the current enforcement practices against unauthorized practice of law throughout the country, how Legalzoom.com and other such companies are being affected by those enforcement actions, and some possibilities for reform.
