Give Non-Lawyers a Bigger Legal Role, Utah Report Proposes (1)

Utah should significantly loosen, or even repeal, a state bar rule prohibiting law firms and other legal services operations from sharing fees with non-lawyers, a task force on lawyer regulatory change proposes.

The recommendation to ease or gut state bar Rule 5.4 was included in a 71-page report highlighting suggestions for wide-ranging legal system changes, which the Utah Work Group on Regulatory Reform recently sent to the state’s Supreme Court.

"(W)e view the elimination or substantial relaxation of Rule 5.4 as key to allowing lawyers to fully and comfortably participate in the technological revolution,” the report found. “Without such a ...