Courtroom5 CEO Sonja Ebron and Maya Markovich, Executive Director of the Justice Technology Association, co-authored an article for the Thomson Reuters Institute examining how uncertainty around unauthorized practice of law (UPL) rules is chilling innovation in AI-driven legal tools—tools that could help close the justice gap for the 92% of low-income Americans who receive no or insufficient legal assistance.
It is time to upend the calculus of consumer harm and examine the motives of regulation. Rather than forcing tech-based legal services to prove they cause no harm in order to avoid charges of UPL, regulators should be required to justify, with data, that legal technology companies cause harm and whether any ruling will constrain supply in the face of a catastrophic lack of access to justice.
— Maya Markovich and Sonja Ebron for Thomson Reuters Institute
