Law Firms Owned by Non-Lawyers: Oh, It's Happening
by: Tom Hochstatter, President
Arizona now finds itself at the forefront legal services industry disruption and innovation. It’s not often a state supreme court is the headlining disruptive force in a particular industry. We are conditioned to see a hot new Silicon Valley start-up or some major scientific discovery cause massive shape-shifting impact on an industry, but not this time.
Just over a month ago the Arizona Supreme court voted to overturn Rule 5.4 which prevented non-lawyers having an economic interest in a law firm. The motivation for this was to provide more and better access to legal services and to add a new level of legal para-professional, what I liken to the Physicians Assistant in the medical fields. From the court:
“The Court’s goal is to improve access to justice and to encourage innovation in the delivery of legal services. The work of the task force adopted by the Court will make it possible for more people to access affordable legal services and for more individuals and families to get legal advice and help. These new rules will promote business innovation in providing legal services at affordable prices.”
From our vantage point here at Techson, we see a significant opportunity within the practice of intellectual property to create unique ownership with a law firm to provide inventors a broad set of “one-stop-shop” legal and IP solutions to cover the entirety of the Innovation Supply Chain (ISC). Equally important, this newly organized firm can directly align economic outcomes at each major ISC milestone whether it’s prosecution, portfolio management, monetization, renewals, or licensing management with those inventors or patent holders.
We are looking forward to working with regulators and Arizona-based firms to uncover those unique engagements and be right there at the starting line in January of 2021. How about you?