For lawyers, clients, and all those who believe in fairness, legal reform is a topic of profound importance. New models — like alternative business structures and regulatory sandboxes — are changing the way that legal help is delivered. These innovations can lower costs and make it easier to get help, especially for immigrants and others in need of help who struggle to navigate a system that is often stacked against them.
However, it is not always easy to produce such positive outcomes. Often, these kinds of ‘outside’ forces are met with resistance by those with the most inside options. This ‘countervailing force’ can make it difficult to implement change that is designed to address the most pressing problems.
A common countervailing force to reform is resistance from members of the community who feel that a change will hurt them. This kind of reaction is sometimes the result of a particular community’s cultural values, and can be overcome only with careful study and thoughtful design.
In this Article, I explore a model for addressing these issues that can be used as a guide to better understand how to facilitate changes to the law. This approach begins with a Work Group that carefully develops proposed legislation, communicates and educates interested citizens on the value of the bill, addresses questions or concerns, and makes needed drafting changes to produce a final draft of a piece of legislation. It then seeks to find ways of implementing the proposed reform, with specific metrics and early results in place to demonstrate its success.