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1 results

  • 8 - The Puzzle of Anemic “Legal Tech” and the Future of Legal Services

  • from Part II - Lessons from the Field
  • Edited by David Freeman Engstrom, Stanford University, California, Nora Freeman Engstrom, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    Rethinking the Lawyers' Monopoly
    Published online:
    04 September 2025
    Print publication:
    18 September 2025, pp 173-200
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  • Summary

    David Engstrom and Jess Lu (both Stanford Law) first show that an otherwise fast-growing and dynamic “legal tech” industry has not generated significant “direct-to-consumer” technologies designed to help self-represented litigants navigate a complex legal system. They then interrogate that puzzle: Why is it that better consumer legal tech hasn’t flourished? They ultimately settle on the idea that rule reforms alone may not stimulate high-scale, direct-to-consumer technology. Instead, other policy interventions may be necessary, including standardizing what is currently a checkerboard of court technology and data infrastructures. Perhaps more importantly, direct-to-consumer legal tech may have trouble overcoming some of the problems that are inherent to markets that are attempting to serve individuals with episodic attachment to the civil justice system and limited ability to pay. The result is an important meditation on whether reforms to UPL, Rule 5.4, or something else entirely are necessary to unlock the potential of potent new technologies in order to narrow the justice gap.