Saturday, September 12, 2020

Utah Supreme Court approves five first entities under new regulatory scheme

The Utah Supreme Court announced that it has approved five entities to enter the legal market under its new regulatory scheme.  The Lawyer Ethics Alert Blog has more on the story here.These entities are:

LawHQ: A Salt Lake City law firm which plans to offer equity ownership to certain software developers in the firm and a software application called CallerHQ, which is designed to allow consumers to report spam telephone calls, text messages and voicemails. Consumers who sign up may then be included in a mass tort litigation brought by LawHQ against the spammers.

1Law: An entity which plans to provide no-cost and low-cost legal services to assist clients in completing court documents and also offer related legal advice using chatbots, instant messaging, automated interviews, nonlawyer staff and technology-assisted lawyers. 1Law plans to have more than 50% nonlawyer ownership.

LawPal: An entity which plans to provide a TurboTax-like technology platform to generate legal documents in contested and uncontested divorce and custody cases, eviction cases and debt-related property seizure cases. It expects to feature 50% nonlawyer ownership.

Blue Bee Bankruptcy Law: The sole owner of this law firm states that he will give his paralegal employee a 10% ownership interest in the firm as an incentive to remain with the firm.

The last entity is better known.  It is Rocket Lawyer, a company that does not seem to understand (or at least does a very bad job of explaining) the difference between the notion of confidentiality and the attorney client privilege (see here), which offers to connect clients with available lawyers.  The ABA Journal has the story.  

The Court's full order is available here


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