Freeing Speech.
Expanding Legal Help.
Millions of Americans are forced to navigate civil legal issues alone. The solution is simple: Let more people provide legal help.
The Access-to-Justice Crisis
America has a serious access-to-justice problem. Each year, millions of people face
routine civil legal problems—related to family law, housing, probate, debt collections, small business, and more—but can’t afford or access a lawyer. As a result, they face the legal system on their own or give up entirely, which has serious, far-reaching consequences for many areas of life.
new civil legal problems per year
of low-income Americans have no legal help
of civil cases involve at least one self-represented party
U.S. counties are legal deserts
The solution is simple: Let more people provide legal help.
You shouldn’t need a lawyer license to help someone with basic legal needs, and not every legal issue should require the assistance of an attorney that charges hundreds of dollars per hour. But the rules and laws are designed to give lawyers a broad monopoly over legal activities and advice, even though basic out-of-court advice is protected free speech.
The burden falls especially hard on low-income Americans. Middle-income people are highly affected, too—especially those who earn just above the cutoff for legal aid, yet still can’t afford a lawyer.
Even if cost wasn’t a barrier, there simply aren’t enough lawyers. Scholar Gillian Hadfield estimates that if every lawyer in the country gave 100 extra hours of free legal work a year, it would still only add up to less than 30 minutes of help per legal issue per household.
We need to expand the ability to deliver legal services to allow more people to provide legal assistance. Lawyers alone cannot resolve the access-to-justice crisis. It will require help from a variety of sources—most critically, people without a license to practice law—to address the growing legal needs of all Americans.
A number of states have already begun experimenting with programs to expand the delivery of legal services beyond traditional lawyers. These programs involve modifying state rules regarding the “unauthorized practice of law” (UPL) and creating new avenues for those without law degrees to offer legal assistance. UPL reform, whether achieved through the court rulemaking process, litigation, or legislation, is the essential mechanism to increase access to legal help, and ultimately, justice.
Watch our deep-dive into how protectionist licensing prevents millions from accessing basic legal guidance.
understanding the problem
The Cause: Unauthorized Practice of Law Rules
“Unauthorized practice of law” (UPL) rules make it a crime for anyone without a law degree and license to give basic legal help. In most states, it’s illegal for anyone but a lawyer licensed in that state to offer even simple legal advice, help fill out forms, or draft documents—no matter how qualified they are. These laws create a near-total ban on legal help by people without law degrees and a license to practice, even in low-risk situations.
“Helping someone understand the law shouldn’t be treated as a crime.”
But the state-by-state definitions of what constitutes the practice of law are way too broad. Many legal tasks are routine and low-risk and should not be considered the practice of law: helping someone complete court-approved forms, explaining the next steps in a process, offering guidance on a process, or preparing documents for small claims court. You don’t need a law degree to help someone fill out a form—you just need someone who knows what the form means.
The Way Forward
The Solution: UPL Reform
“People should be free to share what they know— and those in need should be free to choose their legal service provider based on budget, need, and complexity.”
— a new vision for legal assistance
Lawyer-licensing restrictions created the access-to-justice crisis and now block common-sense solutions. People should be free to share what they know—and those in need should be free to choose their legal service provider based on budget, need, and complexity. The law shouldn’t block capable people from helping those who know less.
The solution isn’t more government funding or lawyer-driven systems; it’s opening up opportunities for capable community members, justice advocates, and innovators to legally offer legal help—through permanent UPL exemptions and carveouts that would narrow the scope of what is considered the practice of law.
The Global Precedent
Allowing nonlawyers to provide basic legal advice—including for pay—is neither radical nor new; for example, it is how things work in England, our closest legal cousin. Anyone there is allowed to provide legal advice, with or without a license. A license is only required for six more complex “reserved legal activities,” such as representing someone in court.
How IJ Advocates for Reform
Counsel Unbound is dedicated to vindicating the right of community members, professionals, and innovators without law degrees to provide basic legal advice to those in need and to restoring the freedom to share legal knowledge. We work to reform Unauthorized Practice of Law regulations, narrow the definition of the “practice of law,” and vindicate the First Amendment right of all people—not just lawyers—to give legal advice.
Strategic Litigation
Legal advice is a form of speech, and is protected by the First Amendment. IJ is currently litigating key cases on behalf of legal services providers, seeking precedent-setting decisions which will allow people to deliver the legal help which is so needed.
Court rulemaking & legislative efforts
In most states, the state supreme court has jurisdiction over how the practice of law is regulated. But courts rarely hear from either the public or those who are ready, willing, and able to provide legal help, but can’t because they don’t have a license. We engage communities in court rulemaking and legislative processes to ensure their voices are heard.
Education & Advocacy
Many people are unaware of the restrictions on who may practice law and what constitutes the practice of law. Some people may not realize how out of reach legal help is, until they are experiencing a legal problem themselves. Through outreach and the media, Counsel Unbound @ IJ helps educate the public about legal regulatory reform and spotlights those who are well-positioned to provide assistance, but are held back by unauthorized practice restrictions.
Through this multifaceted approach, Counsel Unbound @ IJ protects and promotes the rights of those seeking to provide legal help, and advocates for a world in which people may choose for themselves how to receive assistance.
How You Can Advocate for Reform
The rules that govern who may provide legal help and how are often shaped through processes that receive little public attention—and that lack meaningful participation from the very people most affected by them. You can help change that.
Sign up here and we will keep you posted on efforts by your state’s supreme court or legislature to increase access to justice so you can get involved and make your and your community’s voices heard.
Regulatory reform efforts
Several states have altered their rules on the practice of law in an attempt to expand access to justice. The method of regulatory reform has differed from state to state:
NATIONAL REFORM MAP
- Reform Efforts passed
Existing Program Types
Community Justice Workers/Certified Legal Advocates
Low-barrier programs that allow nonlawyers to receive short, modular training and provide legal assistance within specified areas of the law, currently with oversight by existing legal aid, lawyers, or an approved community-based organization.
Licensed Paraprofessionals
High-barrier programs that require formal education, advanced training, and experience; can provide legal assistance in specified circumstances, charge for services, and in most states can work independently without supervision.
Regulatory Sandboxes
Allows businesses to experiment with new methods of delivering legal services which would not be permitted under the traditional rules governing law practice (e.g., nonlawyer ownership of law firms, legal software, and nonlawyer legal services).
Alternative Business Structures
Businesses apply for a license that allows nonlawyers to have an economic interest and/or decision-making ability in a business which provides legal services, often in conjunction with other services like accounting, but all legal services must be provided by a lawyer.
A historical perspective
How Lawyers Gained a Monopoly on the Practice of Law
While courts and lawyers have existed in the United States since the colonial era, the present monopoly over the practice of law by lawyers is a relatively recent development, emerging only in the 20th century. Early attempts to regulate the practice of law in the colonial period were concentrated on controlling who could appear in court, and did not touch upon the practice of law beyond the courtroom. Formal legal schooling was rare, and almost anyone with some legal expertise could call themselves a lawyer.
After independence and into the 19th century, attempts to regulate the profession gave way to a greater distrust of lawyers, and a more egalitarian attitude regarding the practice of law. The freewheeling attitude of “Jacksonian democracy” and a desire to break with the hierarchies of the British colonial past produced a relatively permissive and informal legal system. Most states eliminated educational requirements for admission to law practice, and a number of states even affirmed that any citizen should have the ability to practice law. Although many states maintained formal licensing statutes, admission standards were often minimal, inconsistently enforced, and largely confined to controlling appearances in court.
Free Speech and Legal Advice
At its core, this is a free speech issue. Giving legal advice is speech—plain and simple. When the government makes it a crime for someone to explain what a law means, how a legal process works, or what options a person might have, it is restricting speech based on its content. The First Amendment does not allow the government to silence people simply because the topic is law or because the speaker lacks a particular license. There is no “lawyers-only” exception to free speech. People do not lose their constitutional rights because the information they want to share happens to be legal knowledge.
Unauthorized Practice of Law rules flip the First Amendment on its head by treating the sharing of legal knowledge as dangerous conduct rather than protected expression. Instead of targeting fraud, coercion, or real harm—things the law already knows how to regulate—these rules impose sweeping bans on speech itself, even when that speech is truthful, helpful, and requested by someone who needs it. The result is not consumer protection, but enforced silence: Community members, advocates, and professionals are barred from helping, and millions of people are left to navigate the legal system alone. Counsel Unbound exists to restore a basic constitutional principle—that people should be free to share what they know, and others should be free to choose who they trust to help them understand the law.
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Additional Reading
For decades, scholars, researchers, and policy experts have studied the rules that govern who may provide legal help and the consequences those rules have for access to justice. Their work has uncovered the historical roots of unauthorized practice restrictions, examined new regulatory approaches, and evaluated the real-world impact of allowing trained nonlawyers to provide legal assistance.
Counsel Unbound builds on this body of research. The materials listed here highlight some of the most important scholarship on the history of unauthorized practice of law rules, emerging justice-worker programs, and the evidence on the effectiveness of nonlawyer legal help.
History
Laurel A. Rigertas.
The Birth of the Movement to Prohibit the Unauthorized Practice of Law. Quinnipiac Law Review. 2018.
Laurel A. Rigertas.
Lobbying and Litigating Against “Legal Bootleggers” – The Role of the Organized Bar in the Expansion of the Courts’ Inherent Powers in the Early Twentieth Century. California Western Law Review. 2009.
Barlow E. Christensen.
The Unauthorized Practice of law: Do Good Fences Really Make Good Neighbors—or Even Good Sense? American Bar Foundation Research Journal. 1980.
Nora Freeman Engstrom and James Stone.
Auto Clubs and the Lost Origins of the Access-to-Justice Crisis. Yale Law Journal. 2024.
Efficacy of Nonlawyers
Rebecca L. Sandefur.
Legal Advice from Nonlawyers: Consumer Demand, Provider Quality, and Public Harms. Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties. 2020.
Nora Freeman Engstrom and Natalie Anne Knowlton.
Unauthorized Practice: Assessing Available Evidence. Available on SSRN. 2025.
On Licensing Speech
Paul Sherman.
Occupational Speech and the First Amendment. Harvard Law Review. 2015.
Paul Sherman and Daniel Nelson.
The (Weak) Historical Case for Licensing Speech. Available on SSRN. 2026.
New Programs: Research and Insights
Rebecca L. Sandefur and Matthew Burnett.
Building Successful Justice Worker Programs: Emerging Insights from Research and Practice. Alaska Law Review. 2024.
Jessica Bednarz and Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System. Unlocking Legal Regulation: Lessons Learned and Recommendations for the Future. 2024.
American Bar Foundation Access to Justice Initiative.
Analysis of the Social and Economic Impact of the Alaksa Community Justice Worker Program (2021 – 2025). 2025.
American Bar Foundation Access to Justice Initiative.
Analysis of the Social and Economic Impact of Delaware Qualified Tenant Advocates (2022 – 2025). 2025.
Innovation for Justice.
Expanding Legal Advice and Assistance for Domestic Violence Survivors. 2024.
Questions?
Questions? Contact Counsel Unbound at [email protected].