Posted: January 22, 2019
Rules Governing the State Bar, Rules Governing Licensed Paralegal Practitioner, and Licensed Paralegal Practitioners Rules of Professional Conduct – Comment Period Closed March 8, 2019
Rules Governing the State Bar
USB14-0802. Authorization to practice law. The amendments to Rule 14-802 clarify that the forms an LPP may use are forms approved by the Judicial Council.
Rules Governing Licensed Paralegal Practitioners
URGLPP15-0510. Prosecution and appeals. The amendment to Rule 15-510 changes a cross reference to Standing Order No.7 to a cross reference to Rule 14-303.
Licensed Paralegal Practitioners Rules of Professional Conduct
LPP1.013. Organization as a client. Rule 1.13 is repealed because it governs when an LPP represents an organization as a client and an LPP may not represent an organization as a client.
LPP5.04. Professional independence of a licensed paralegal practitioner and LPP6.01. Voluntary pro bono legal service.
The amendments to Rules 5.4 and 6.1 remove language that refers to an LPP representing an organization as a client. An LPP may not represent an organization as a client.
This entry was posted in -Licensed Paralegal Practitioners Rules of Professional Conduct, -Rules Governing Licensed Paralegal Practitioner, -Rules Governing the State Bar, LPP1.013, LPP5.04, LPP6.01, RGLPP15-0510.
14-802 I believe line 144 should read “Online Court Assistance Program” (not “consumer” assistance)
The proposal to allow paralegals to practice law in the areas of family law etc. is an assault on the integrity of the legal profession. After all the time and energy people put into attending law school and taking the Bar Exam, you are now proposing that people with absolutely none of that training should be considered qualified to engage in the “limited practice of law”? The result will be the creation of two classes of litigants: one group will have the money to pay for a real lawyer and will get real advice. The other will get unschooled advice from a paralegal. There will thus be quality work going on alongside sloppy work. That is not fair to those wh might go to a paralegal. The people of Utah deserve better.
Better to encourage more pro bono or low bono work from real lawyers than to allow persons with no law school training to being giving legal advice and doing legal work. You plan makes a sham of law school and of those who worked hard to pass law school and the Bar.
As a former university professor, I saw only too clearly the difference in quality of those who were teaching with the strength of a PhD behind them and those who were teaching as TAs without their doctorates. The students were the losers when TAs were hired to do what PhDs should have been doing. It will be the same with clients of paralegals.
I strongly object to the proposed changes in the Rules and urge you not to adopt them.