The argument that nonlawyer ownership of law firms will solve the access to justice problem is a farce.
Nonlawyer investors don't want to enter the legal space out of a charitable desire to help underserved communities that cannot afford a lawyer. They want to enter it for one reason only: to make money.
The areas of law where access to justice is truly lacking are, almost by definition, the areas where there isn’t much money to be made. If there were, the market would already be serving those clients.
So what actually happens when outside capital comes in? It doesn’t flow to the hardest, least profitable problems. It flows to the areas that are already profitable.
That means more money chasing the same types of cases. More pressure to scale. More pressure to standardize. More pressure to treat legal work like a product instead of a service.
That’s how you get further commoditization of the practice of law. And when that happens, consumers don’t benefit. They get processed as a number.
Access to justice is a real issue. But pretending that private equity or outside ownership will solve it ignores the basic incentives at play.
Investors are looking for profit. If you can’t afford a lawyer, there’s no profit there. And if they figure out a way to make money anyway, it’s probably not by helping you. It’s by taking advantage of you.
Just look at private equity’s role in residential housing. It hasn’t made things more affordable. It’s made housing more expensive, with more junk fees and less accountability.
Non-lawyer ownership isn't about expanding access to justice. It’s about creating access to the legal industry’s revenue for private equity.
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