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Abstract

Multidisciplinary practices (MDPs) are a big item in legal news. State and national professional associations as well as scholars are preoccupied with the challenges to traditional legal practice. The push to revise legal institutions to allow expansion of lawyer-nonlawyer practices stems from the rapid growth and importance of large business consultancies. MDPs, however, are also an important development in reenvisioning legal practice for low and moderate income people. We are in a period of experimentation on how to provide assistance to people in dealing with law and legal institutions. There is a flowering of academic writing, conferences, and practitioner accounts discussing various types of strategies. One strategy involves providing limited legal services and relying on the client as his or her own advocate. Examples of this are unbundling, do-it-yourself systems, advice hotlines and community legal education. A contrasting strategy is to increase impact and individual litigation using lawyers in a conventional law office where the lawyer is the dominant authority, perhaps assisted by nonlawyer support personnel. The recent tobacco and handgun suits are examples of impact litigation. Programs that provide pro bono lawyers for individual cases are an example of efforts to expand representation.

Publication Title

Clinical Law Review

Volume

7

Issue

1

First Page

227

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