Judge Carolyn Kuhl (L.A. Superior Court), until recently the chief judge of the nation’s largest trial court system, offers an important contribution to the debate about whether and how to relax “courthouse UPL” – the possibility that judges, court clerks, other court staff, and AI-enabled chatbots might plausibly narrow the justice gap by providing self-represented litigants with necessary assistance. At once a history lesson and an in-the-trenches look at a decade of L.A. court reforms, Judge Kuhl shows how the anxieties about judicial and court neutrality have given way to a rich array of reform options that are producing concrete lessons for other judicial reformers looking for alternatives to conventional forms of legal help.

Rebecca Aviel (Denver University (Sturm) Law) draws on her deep expertise in family law to illuminate ways in which domestic relations cases are exceptional relative to other legal areas where access concerns are acute. Family law’s exceptionalism, she contends, justifies thoroughgoing changes to that system’s adversarial architecture, such as permitting a single lawyer to represent both sides in a divorce, that are well-tailored to family law even if nonstarters in other parts of the civil justice system. Aviel also suggests that some innovative family law programs might travel well, informing reforms in other civil justice contexts even where they cannot be directly replicated.

Allison Hoffman (University of Pennsylvania Carey Law), an expert on health care regulation, focuses on tectonic changes to health care in recent decades. She offers a bracing account of these shifts, arguing that American doctors may have overreached in their efforts at influencing health care regulation. In so doing, physicians created profit pools that corporate interests proved all too adept at capturing, leaving doctors with lower professional status than they might have otherwise enjoyed. Hoffman suggests that lawyers, and legal reformers more generally, might learn from physicians’ cautionary tale of protectionism and profit.

Philip G. Peters, Jr. (University of Missouri Law) examines whether nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) offer a promising template for limited license legal professionals. He interrogates the rise of these professions in the medical field, asking, among other things: Do they deliver quality services despite training that is significantly shorter and less expensive than the training of physicians? Do they reduce consumer costs? And do they improve access to care for underserved populations? The chapter also outlines the strategic factors underlying the remarkable success that the NP and PA professions have had, at least until recently, in statehouses across the country and then notes the arguments being made now by physicians against freeing NPs and PAs from all physician oversight. The chapter ends by identifying key lessons from this history for those seeking to create new categories of limited license legal professionals.

Genevieve Lakier (University of Chicago Law) examines Upsolve v. James, where a district court enjoined the application of New York state’s unauthorized practice of law statutes to the Justice Advocates that the nonprofit organization, Upsolve, planned to train, to assist low-income New Yorkers file for bankruptcy. The opinion represents a clear victory for the access-to-justice movement. But it also represents a potentially significant change in how courts understand the First Amendment to apply in unauthorized-practice-of-law cases. Although the decision may be overturned on appeal, the logic of the opinion thus makes clear the promise that what critics have sometimes described as a “Lochnerized” First Amendment holds out to access-to-justice advocates, as well as some of its perils. In this chapter, Lakier explains why the decision is significant, embeds it within a broader story of doctrinal transformation, and spells out some of the benefits and costs of using a Lochner-like First Amendment to promote access to justice.

Sam Issacharoff (NYU Law), a leading law professor and litigator, and Hon. Beverly Martin (NYU Law), formerly of the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, after sketching a bracing account of the origins of the current access-to-justice crisis, ask why changing legal services regulation won’t suffice to solve it. Focusing on debt collection lawsuits – currently the modal case in the entire American civil legal system – they show how much of the current crisis stems from adversarial asymmetries resulting from new species of institutional litigants that leverage scale economies and potent new technologies to assembly-line cases through the legal system. They outline a number of potential solutions to better way to contend with the stunning scale of the current access challenges.

The legal services marketplace sits on the cusp of a revolution. For nearly a century, American lawyers have enjoyed a monopoly over the provision of legal services. Sweeping unauthorized practice of law (UPL) laws have prohibited (and in some cases, criminalized) the practice of law by anyone other than a licensed attorney – and these rules have further mandated that lawyers work as solo practitioners or in lawyer-owned law firms.1 This one-two punch has meant that only lawyers can provide legal advice and that even lawyers can’t practice law in nonlawyer-owned entities.2

This chapter examines the intersection of artificial intelligence and the right of publicity, with a particular focus on deepfakes. It explores the concept of the right of publicity, its historical development, and its relevance in the digital age. The chapter delves into the legal challenges posed by deepfakes, which can manipulate individuals’ images and voices for malicious or commercial purposes. The chapter closes by discussing potential legal remedies and regulatory approaches to address the risks associated with deepfakes and to protect individuals’ rights of publicity.

The onward march of AI poses fundamental challenges for the entire intellectual property system. For patent, trade secret, and copyright, the challenge flows from AI’s interaction with and influence on the definition of protectible creations and information. As discussed earlier, the discordance risks significantly shrinking the pool of what is subject to protection by patent, trade secret, and copyright.

This chapter delves into the complex legal questions surrounding AI-generated content and intellectual property rights. Because copyright and patent law primarily focus on human authorship and inventorship, the emergence of AI raises questions about the extent to which AI systems can be considered creators. The chapter explores the possibility of AI-generated works receiving copyright or patent protection and the challenges in determining authorship and originality in the context of AI. Additionally, the chapter examines the potential impact of AI on trademark and trade secret law. It discusses whether AI systems can own or hold intellectual property rights, as well as the implications for businesses and individuals who rely on AI-generated content.