Limited Licenses And Limited Justice: Rethinking LLPs And The Access-to-Justice Gap

by Brooke Karsteter, Associate Member, University of Cincinnati Law Review Vol. 94

I. Introduction

The American legal system, often perceived as a pillar of justice, is failing millions. Across the nation, a persistent and ever-widening “justice gap” leaves countless individuals and communities trapped in “legal deserts,” unable to access essential legal services for basic human needs, such as shelter, health, and child custody.¹ This crisis has spurred numerous calls for innovative solutions, with many jurisdictions exploring limited licensed legal professional (“LLP”) programs as a primary means to expand access to legal services. LLPs, and similar professionals, are licensed or regulated non-lawyers authorized to perform specific law-related work without attorney supervision.² While well-intentioned, these programs risk formalizing a two-tier system that delivers narrower advice and thinner protections to the very communities the reforms seek to serve. Early state experiments show persistent challenges of scope, distribution, and financial sustainability; meanwhile, the same public resources might be used to expand proven pathways to full-service counsel.

This article argues that jurisdictions should be cautious adopting that utilize licensed professionals with a limited license to practice law models and should instead prioritize lawyer-centric, adequately funded, and tech-enabled strategies that expand access without compromising quality or independence. Part II will provide background on the legal deserts and the emergence of LLPs. Part III will first evaluate early state experiments and explain why LLP frameworks have not yet demonstrated a scalable path to closing the gap, particularly in rural, legal deserts. It will then outline collateral risks for clients and for the profession, and it will conclude by proposing alternative strategies that better align with the goal of equal justice.

II. Background

This section will provide the factual and conceptual foundation for understanding the civil justice gap and the phenomenon of “legal deserts.” It then explains why traditional responses remain inadequate and describes the emergence and rationale for alternative legal professionals (“ALP”) or limited licensed legal professionals (“LLP”). It then provides a brief overview of state LLP programs, their frameworks, and the lessons learned. Finally, it concludes with a survey of early and persistent concerns from the organized bar associations and policymakers.

A. The Pervasive “Justice Gap” and the Reality of “Legal Deserts”

The civil justice gap is longstanding and widely acknowledged: for decades, research has documented a persistent shortfall in the availability of civil legal services.³ That gap affects not only the poor but also the “modest means” or “missing middle” who earn too much to qualify for free legal aid yet cannot afford prevailing market rates (e.g., average hourly fees around $400.00 in some jurisdictions).⁴ Over 100 million poor and middle-income Americans are unable to secure counsel for matters implicating basic needs such as shelter, sustenance, safety, health, and child custody.⁵ In many communities, particularly rural ones, the shortage is not only economic, but geographic as well.

“Legal deserts” are geographic areas with insufficient access to legal services, often characterized by extremely low attorney-to-population ratios.⁶ More than 1,300 U.S. counties have fewer than one attorney per 1,000 residents, and many have none.⁷ Rural regions experience the most acute shortages. For example, some Wisconsin counties report ratios as high as one attorney for every 4,452 individuals, exacerbated by an aging attorney population and a lack of new attorney entrants.⁸ Indiana policymakers have likewise operationalized “legal deserts” by tying county-level classifications to population and density metrics; urban areas with fewer than one attorney per 1,000 residents are treated as service-deficient and rural counties are individually classified according to population and density thresholds.⁹

The consequences of legal deserts are concrete. Individuals and communities encounter substantial barriers obtaining help for housing, family law, and consumer-debt matters.¹⁰ The resulting stress has the potential to escalate into loss of employment and perpetuate a strain on familial relationships.¹¹ A parallel “knowledge gap” compounds the problem—many people do not recognize their problems as legal in nature or know how to find help.¹²

B. Inadequacy of Traditional Solutions

Conventional responses, such as legal aid providers and ad hoc pro bono cases taken on by local attorneys and firms, are indispensable but chronically under-resourced and often can only take on the poorest clients.¹³ Resource constraints force legal-aid organizations to turn away roughly half of eligible requests for assistance, most often from lower-middle class individuals or those living in rural communities.¹⁴ Despite calls for increased funding, consistent cuts over the years have made access more difficult.¹⁵ The result is a “lawyerless court”, where many tribunals implicitly presume both parties are represented by attorneys, even though pro se litigants overwhelmingly populate their dockets.¹⁶ Pro se parties face substantial obstacles navigating complex procedures, unequal bargaining power, and fragmented information.¹⁷ The result is a system that frequently decides cases on process rather than merits.

C. The Emergence and Rationale for Alternative Legal Professionals and Limited Licensed Legal Professionals

Academic commentators, bar groups, and state courts have explored “access-enhancing” innovations that expand roles for non-lawyers through LLP pilot programs.¹⁸ Proponents frame this as a delivery-system innovation that could expand capacity and reduce costs, frequently invoking analogies to Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants in healthcare, who are considered mid-level professionals who broaden access to routine care.¹⁹ Washington’s Limited License Legal Technician program was widely promoted as a pioneering model targeted initially at family matters for low- and moderate-income individuals.²⁰

D. The Lessons from Early Experiments: The Unfulfilled Promise of ALPs

1. Washington Limited License Legal Technician (“LLLT”)

Despite early fanfare, the Washington Supreme Court ended the LLLT program in 2020, identifying unresolved questions about financial sustainability, limited scope, low participation, urban concentration, and the absence of clear evaluative metrics.²¹ Efforts to expand beyond family law (e.g., immigration, elder law, landlord-tenant) did not materialize.²² The core private-market premise of LLLTs operating independent businesses struggled to reach low-income clients or rural communities in meaningful numbers.²³

2. Utah Limited Licensed Professionals

While also adopting a private market model, Utah’s LLP program expanded the scope of practice beyond Washington’s LLLTs to include family law, forcible entry or detainer, and small claims debt.²⁴ However, early distributional challenges mirrored Washington’s experience, grappling with a sustainable business model and market viability, with participation clustering in urban markets.²⁵ Policymakers extended the initial two-year evaluation period to assess whether the model can demonstrate durable impact.²⁶

3. Arizona Limited Licensed Paraprofessionals

Arizona has taken a more expansive approach, implementing an LLP program that allows for full-scope, independent representation in discrete areas of law.²⁷ Supporters viewed a private market as the only realistic option, given the persistent underfunding of public legal services.²⁸ Strong dissents question whether fee-charging non-lawyers with minimal training can adequately protect clients and whether reforms were “fully baked.”²⁹

Across jurisdictions, there are two common themes. First, distribution: participation clusters in urban markets, leaving rural legal deserts largely untouched. Second, economics: a private-market model, even with narrowed training and licensure costs, has not shown it can sustainably serve the poorest clients without external subsidy, or institutional support.³⁰

E. The Lessons from Early Experiments: The Unfulfilled Promise of LLPs

Proposals to authorize non-lawyer practice have long faced “dogged opposition from the organized bar,” and prior formal explorations often stalled amid resistance.³¹ Critics caution that attenuated regulatory regimes risk an “ethical minefield,” particularly if profit-seeking entities or minimally trained providers deliver legal services without the full suite of professional obligations.³² Others question whether duplicative ethical codes for non-lawyers, absent rigorous education, can ensure quality, accountability, and consumer protection at scale.³³ Distributional concerns also loom: a two-tier system emerge in which paraprofessionals primarily serve low-income clients while attorneys remain the default for those who can pay more.³⁴ Practical doubts also persist about whether a private-market model can cover the costs of training, licensure, and oversight while serving clients who cannot pay market rates.³⁵ These concerns do not question the goal of access, only whether this vehicle reliably advances it.

III. Discussion

This Section first argues that early state experiments have not demonstrated a sustainable path to closing the justice gap, particularly in rural legal deserts. It next demonstrates that ALP or LLP frameworks risk entrenching a compromised, two-tier system of justice and carry collateral consequences for the legal profession’s ethics and economics. Lastly, this section proposes that more promising solutions reside in targeted investments in legal aid, education and licensure reform, technology, and rural-practice incentives.

A. The Detrimental Impact on the General Population: A Compromised, Two-Tiered Justice System

LLP programs are inherently designed for limited and non-complex legal problems. That constraint may misalign with the lived reality of clients whose “simple” cases quickly implicate contested facts, evidence, collateral consequences, and the need for in-court advocacy. Some state frameworks further prohibit key advocacy. Without the depth of legal education and embedded ethics formation; quality-assurance and privilege/confidentiality protections may be thinner for clients of modest-means, creating unequal treatment under the law.³⁶ Absent fee caps or subsidy, LLPs have the ability to set their fees close to the hourly rates of licensed attorneys, narrowing any affordability benefit.³⁷ Policymakers in multiple jurisdictions have explicitly warned that a private-market approach risks “cutting out the indigent,” making the two-tier danger a structural reality rather than theoretical.³⁸ This does not expand justice but rather formalizes an unequal system.

It is not clear that LLPs, with their own business costs, can sustainably fill this gap. Additionally, while LLPs are proposed as a solution, the focus may divert attention and resources from the critical need for increased funding for traditional legal aid, which demonstrably serves the most vulnerable.

B. Implications for the Legal Profession: Ethics, Economics, and Independence

Many lawyers express fear that ALPs will “eat their lunch,” leading to anticompetitive behavior and a direct economic threat, especially to new lawyers.³⁹ Concerns exist that introducing non-lawyer practitioners could undercut attorneys’ ability to find work and paying clients, particularly for those struggling with student debt.⁴⁰ The training and cost differential is often cited as emblematic, for example, Washington’s LLLT required roughly a year of coursework at around $10,000.00, compared to the far greater time and expense of a three-year juris doctor, which averages around $138,088.00 in tuition alone or about $46,029.00 per year.⁴¹ Proponents frame this as a cost-effective specialization; critics see it as devaluing the juris doctor and inviting the “Uberization” of legal services, converting complex matters into discrete, on-demand tasks.⁴²

A recurring theme is ethical capacity, where non-lawyers are not trained in legal ethics to the same depth as attorneys, raising questions about navigating conflicts, confidentiality, and duties to courts and clients. As Stephen P. Younger, a New York litigator, has noted, lawyers in small towns are “an essential part of the community,” and moving their work into corporate-owned delivery channels, or “rolling them all into Walmart,” as he put it, could harm local institutions while increasing competitive pressure on solo and small-firm practitioners.⁴³ Reflecting this sentiment, a New York State Bar survey reported strong opposition, approximately 80%, to external control over legal decision-making.⁴⁴

Ultimately, the push for LLPs forces a re-examination of what qualifies as the “practice of law,” and which lawyerly attributes–expertise, independent judgment, fiduciary duty–should be strictly guarded and exercised only by those with the requisite skills, character, and values.⁴⁵ Any reform should be justified as serving the public interest, not the parochial interests of the bar, while still preserving the core qualities that warrant licensure in the first place.

C. Advocating for Alternative, Comprehensive Solutions to the Justice Gap

If the goal is to close the justice gap, rather than create a parallel limited-service track, reforms should target root causes in training, delivery, and geography. Legal education and licensure can be modernized to produce more practice-ready attorneys without sacrificing ethical formation and broaden entry pathways, embed supervised experiential learning through the curriculum, and integrate professional responsibility from day one.⁴⁶ Consistent investments in legal aid and structured pro bono services are essential to providing service-conditioned scholarships, loan-assistance for graduates who commit to public service or to practice in legal deserts, and support for nonprofit sliding-scale models can bridge the gap to justice. These measures should be paired with formal recognition and credit systems that normalize ongoing pro bono participation across the bar.

Additionally, technology should serve as an accelerator rather than a substitute for counsel. Plain-language forms, guided interviews, AI-enabled triage and document assembly, and courthouse navigator programs can reduce procedure-driven failure points for self-represented litigants without crossing into unauthorized practice.⁴⁷ Courts can complement these tools by simplifying procedures, especially in high-volume dockets, so that outcomes turn on merits rather than procedural or technical hurdles.

Reforms to the legal system must meet rural communities where they are. Durable pipelines into legal deserts require start-up grants and reduced-overhead workspaces (including shared offices in courthouses), targeting loan forgiveness for rural service, reliable telepractice infrastructure, and sustained law-school externships and clinics embedded in rural settings.⁴⁸ Taken together, these strategies point toward a lawyer-centric and adequately funded system that expands meaningful access without building a separate limited-license track. Such a system better aligns with the legal profession’s ethical commitments while still addressing the geographic and economic realities that perpetuate the justice gap as it relates to rural communities.

IV. Conclusion

LLPs promise more help for more people, but early state experience shows stubborn challenges of scope, distribution, and sustainability, and a real risk of entrenching two tiers of justice. Rather than invest little to no resources in an unproven parallel track, jurisdictions should prioritize reforms that increase the supply of practice-ready lawyers, stabilize funding for full-service counsel, streamline routine steps, and build durable pipelines into rural communities. The goal is equal justice delivered by professionals trained to exercise independent judgment and bound by the full set of ethical duties, without reserving that level of representation for those who can most easily afford it.

Cover Photo by Bob Armstrong on Unsplash

Brooke Karsteter

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