We've seen (and can expect more) law review articles exploring ways in which the regulation of the bar and of the legal services industry (not the same things) should, will, or must change. I've written a few.
These article are mostly authored by law teachers. At the risk of academic pride (to which I plead guilty) and paraphrasing Pound (Ezra, not Roscoe), I suggest that legal scholars have been and will continue to be the antennae of the profession.
The momentum for change, which is different, will come from elsewhere -- from economic forces (rules change when it is in the economic interest of lawyers to change them, witness the adoption of lateral screening after 20 years of rejection), and to beat back external threats (witness the 2003 amendments to Rules 1.6 and 1.13, after repeated rejections, in order to dissuade the SEC from invoking its full Sarbanes-Oxley powers; it worked).
But academics will primarily inspire the ideas that define the shape the changes will take. This is our history.
The bar seriously lagged in updating its rules through 1970. The 1908 Canons, even as amended, were useless to the bar of the 1960s and earlier decades. The 1970 Code was inadequate on day one, which is why seven years after adoption it was necessary to appoint a new commission (the Kutak commission) to start all over.
The Kutak Model Rules had a longer shelf life but by the time of Ethics 2000, it also needed significant amendment. Ethics 2000 narrowed the lag between the bar's offical position and law as practiced.
If Ethics 2000 was our finest hour, the MJP commission runs a close second. MJP was writing on a smaller canvas -- how sensibly to deal with lawyers' cross-border practices -- but it wrote well and has been influential (full disclosure: I was on it).
The 20/20 commission (same disclosure) did some good things, but around the edges. It missed opportunities to be visionary (to see things 20/20, as it was charged), but it can be partly excused for two reasons. First, the hostility of a large minority in the HOD even to permit talking about rules allowing some lay investment in for-profit law firms -- just talking -- cast a broader pall and led 20/20 to stay within safe borders.
Second, the current bar leadership will not be bold. In this, it is like the leaders of the 50s through the early 80s. It will be the next generations that approach the issues with appetite for change.
A datum of proof (not unique) was an exchange at a 20/20 hearing with a prominent and thoughtful participant in these matters and who spoke against any rule change that would allow non-lawyers to have any equity interest in law firms, however small.
Would your position be the same, he was asked, if you assumed that a modest change would both improve the quality of advice to clients and result in no misconduct by the non-lawyers or the lawyers they work with whatsoever?
Yes, he said.
So there you have it. We're not dealing with empiricism and evidence-based rules -- the bar does not emprically test its own empirical predictions of the effects of rules it supports or opposes -- but with ideology or maybe a better word is faith.