Legal aid lawyers can be very resistant to nonlawyer and digital solutions to providing another path to access. Like solos and many small firm practitioners their identity is threatened by digital alternatives, so everyone digs in, in the name of professionalism. But the price is the high percentage of citizens who never get served. At the same time, some of the most positive developments happen in the legal aid community. When major disruptive change is happening there is always tension. I am old enough to remember the upheavals in 1981, when the PC was first introduced.. History repeating, but I believe bright futures ahead.
Thank you for this insight! lately I have been feeling a new level of pettiness and short-sightedness in the views of anti-progress legal aid folks. It is good to hear that we have been here before and that things are trending in the right direction.
Legal aid lawyers can be very resistant to nonlawyer and digital solutions to providing another path to access. Like solos and many small firm practitioners their identity is threatened by digital alternatives, so everyone digs in, in the name of professionalism. But the price is the high percentage of citizens who never get served. At the same time, some of the most positive developments happen in the legal aid community. When major disruptive change is happening there is always tension. I am old enough to remember the upheavals in 1981, when the PC was first introduced.. History repeating, but I believe bright futures ahead.
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Thank you for this insight! lately I have been feeling a new level of pettiness and short-sightedness in the views of anti-progress legal aid folks. It is good to hear that we have been here before and that things are trending in the right direction.