Resolutions

It’s January so everyone is setting goals and making predictions for the year ahead, and forgetting all about those goals and predictions for last year that didn’t actually materialize. If you are of the ilk where you have written these things down, dig last year’s out and take a look. I did that recently. My goals for 2019 were adorable.

Anyhow. I’ll put these out to the universe—I want to blog at least once a week (OK, give or take) and talk about more than just the president’s really expensive free lawyer. I want to get a blogroll going. So feel free to suggest your favorite legal ethics blogs for me to follow! (What’s that? Your objection to foundation is overruled, counselor.)

On to predictions. I try not to make predictions, because I’m always wrong anyway. Legal ethics predictions, in particular, are difficult (the easy ones are boring—I mean, I can predict that there will be Florida Man issues and Stories That Seem To Be About Sex But Really Aren’t because those are perennial, but also easy guesses don’t count). The “difficult” predictions are more macro—Rule changes, trends, technology—and those tend to move slowly.

I do think we’ll be seeing more attention paid to non-lawyers legally engaging in the practice of law, as part of a broader focus on access to justice. Washington State and, more recently, Utah have begun licensing non-lawyers with appropriate training and/or paralegal experience to handle discrete legal tasks (such as drafting and settlement negotiation, though not representation in court) where access to licensed lawyers may be out of reach for low-income consumers. (Wisconsin has no such program, yet.)

I’d like to see the advertising rules, which were modified and modernized a bit by the ABA in 2018 but have yet to trickle to most states including Wisconsin, truly updated to reflect how consumers operate in the 21st century. (For instance, people get a lot of their information from their phones from wherever they are, and targeting ads through geofencing is a whole new arena with a lot of commentary but not a lot of official guidance.) That said, I do believe we’ll be seeing some more movement toward adopting the new rules (or going beyond them) and finally acknowledging that people really do know the difference between an advertisement and a command, even if it arrives in the mail without “advertising material” printed all over it.

I’m reluctant to make any technology predictions. At a conference of my nerd friends last year, artificial intelligence and related technologies were a focus, and I think the room was split between people who thought AI was the coolest thing ever, people who thought we were getting way ahead of ourselves, and a few who thought AI was going to put all of us out of business. For what it’s worth, I don’t think we’re anywhere near doomsday, at least not for ethics lawyers. There’s too much “it depends” here, and I don’t think that a bias against my personal obsolescence is driving my head into the sand. Anyway, could you imagine an ethics lawyer robot? (Me: “Sure I could. It’s a protocol droid. It’s C-3PO.” My spouse: “It would be worse than you. Ugh.” )

Anyhow, happy new year everyone! Please leave your own predictions or resolutions in the comments. Otherwise, remind me next year about this post. How did I do?