Rebecca Aviel explained her proposal for a "Counsel for the Divorce" - a joint representation in which the attorney agrees to limit the scope of services to the clients to effectuating an amiable divorce. Rule 1.7's distinction between waivable and unwaivable conflicts is key; she doesn't think that conflict between divorcing spouses is unwaivable given changes in divorce law over past years. E.g., in many states, spouses can file jointly for divorce and can obtain a divorce without even making an appearance. They are not inescapably adversaries. Lawyers should walk through the conflicts analysis with the parties. In some cases (domestic violence, significant disparities in economic power), a joint representation will not be appropriate. In many cases, though, this arrangement facilitates the deployment of legal expertise to facilitate agreement. Rebecca asks, why should this type of advice be available only in an adversarial posture?
Lisa Nicholson addressed the argument that non-attorneys should be permitted to meet certain legal needs. Lisa believes that the free market is ill-equipped to protect consumers from non-attorney legal service providers. It is very difficult to identify "routine" legal matters that can be passed along to non-attorney providers -- even choosing the proper form, and choosing the information to enter on a form, can require judgments that go beyond "routine."
Trevor Farrow and Alice Woolley asked what it means to have "access" to a legal system. When we think about law, it's a mistake to think about it as fundamentally about disputes between people or with the state. In most matters, it's about non-disputed interactions. Law doesn't just do things to people, it gives things to people. There has to be effective dispute resolution, of course. And law is not a series of rules and pronouncements; it is by nature a way of thinking and arguing with its own criteria for coherent evolution. In light of this, we need intermediate lawgivers who allow people to be part of the system that law seeks to establish. We give access to allow people to be part of the creation of legal norms - we are not passive recipients of the law. With this background, they outlined several features of improving access. We can't simply shoehorn ideas on access into existing legal structures; we need to match services to the needs. Alice believes that we can produce competent and effective legal service providers without requiring the level of formal education we currently require. They favor regulated change, as opposed to market-driven, unregulated change. They also favor a multidisciplinary approach to meet "legal" needs, which are usually multidisciplinary in nature. They also believe it is a mistake to limit non-attorney providers to certain isolated tasks; they have to be able to provide real access to address a given problem.