1. Home
2. Columns
3. ABA Day 2025: Your voice, your advocacy,…

Report from Governmental Affairs

April 9, 2025, 6:00 am CDT

Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.

Bold. Innovative. Visionary. At a time when many courts are losing the battle to provide access to justice, especially in low-income communities, the Arizona Supreme Court has brought fresh ideas to bridge the justice gap.

Vice Chief Justice John Lopez, at the invitation of the ABA Crossroads Caucus, discussed innovations his court has recently put in place in a conversation with moderator Mark Martin, dean of High Point University School of Law at the ABA Midyear Meeting in Phoenix in February.

As reported by the Legal Services Corporation in its most recent Justice Gap Study in 2022, low-income Americans do not get any or enough legal help for 92% of their substantive civil legal problems. To address this issue, Lopez and his colleagues have focused on improving access to legal services by lowering costs and increasing options. For lower income citizens, the court approved several programs, including the Legal Paraprofessional Program, the Lawyer Apprentice Program, the Legal Advocate Program and the Government Law Admission Program.

The Legal Paraprofessional Program, to highlight a very successful program, has been in operation since early 2021. It grants a license that allows nonlawyers to offer limited legal services, including legal advice; drafting and filing legal documents, opinions and strategies; and representing clients in court. The first licenses were granted in November 2021, and Arizona has 65 licensed LPs. The program improves access to justice by allowing trained nonlawyers to represent clients in criminal, family, civil, administrative and juvenile law matters. The University of Arizona and Arizona State University offer a Master of Legal Studies that prepares students for the legal paraprofessional licensure exam.

To address the problem of Arizona’s “legal deserts,” a term coined by the ABA to describe counties with few or no lawyers (i.e., fewer than one lawyer per 1,000 residents), the Arizona Supreme Court approved a Lawyer Apprentice Program. The program encourages aspiring lawyers to stay in Arizona, creates a pathway to licensure for law graduates with lower bar scores and increases the number of lawyers in the state. In a state that ranks 49th of 50 states in lawyers per capita, such a program is a necessity, but it’s a very disciplined necessity: Applicants must (1) be graduates of an ABA-accredited law school (2) score 260-269 on the Uniform Bar Exam (3) and commit to practice under the supervision of a qualified Arizona attorney for at least two years in rural Arizona or a public law practice.

More controversial are the Arizona Supreme Court-approved “Alternative Business Structures.” The ABS program allows nonlawyers to partner with lawyers in businesses that provide legal services. The program was created to encourage innovation in legal services and make them more affordable. ABS are subject to the Rules of the Arizona Supreme Court regulating the practice of law, including the requirement that the ABS employ a member of the Arizona Bar who supervises the practice of law. While such arrangements are common in the United Kingdom and Australia, they are actively debated in the U.S.

When Big Four accounting firm KPMG was approved on Feb. 27 to own a law firm under the ABS program, some skeptics asked whether such a step would actually bridge the justice gap or lower costs for lower-income citizens. Lopez acknowledges that some have also raised concerns that the “one-stop shop” model may put traditional firms out of business.

As part of the Arizona Judiciary’s Five-Year Plan, Chief Justice Ann A. Scott Timmer, a 2021 ABA Journal Legal Rebel, has made public trust and confidence in the judiciary a foundational goal. Lopez strongly supports this goal, and the court has put in place several initiatives to address the problem.

He told his audience: “Much of the public’s distrust in our courts is driven by inaccurate media coverage of our cases. Too often, media coverage centers on a case result and often fails to accurately identify the issue, if at all. Inaccurate framing of judicial decisions is then used to drive a narrative that judicial opinions are invariably political decisions. To that end, too many media reports on judicial opinions are limited to the party affiliation of the judge, the case result and its political significance or palatability. This coverage encourages public cynicism and distrust of courts.”

To counter objectively inaccurate characterizations of judicial opinions, the Arizona Supreme Court recently adopted a practice of releasing a brief summary of the judicial opinion that identifies the issues and sets out the reasoning and the decision in the case. Lopez observed that the initial results seem to be positive, noting that coverage of judicial decisions has been more accurate. He said the purpose and effect is not to diminish critical reporting of decisions, but to increase the likelihood that the criticisms and coverage accurately reflect the actual issues, reasoning and conclusions in the case.

Lopez’s final topic was retention elections. Arizona adopted a merit selection system in 1974 that applies to Arizona’s appellate judges and trial court judges in Arizona’s four most populous counties, where a nonpartisan commission of lawyers and citizens investigates and evaluates candidates for judicial positions. The commission then submits the names of the most highly qualified applicants to the governor, who makes the appointment from that list.

Once appointed, judges are subject to retention through regularly scheduled retention elections, by which a majority of votes in favor of a judge results in retention for another term. During judges’ terms, beginning in 1992, a commission of citizens and lawyers, known as “Judicial Performance Review,” assessed judges’ performances and issued recommendations to the voters prior to an election.

From 1974 to 2020, no endorsed judge had ever been removed by voters. In fact, most judges recommended for removal by JPR were retained by voters. Moreover, during those nearly 50 years, only three judges were removed by voters in retention elections; all were embroiled in legal scandal or were otherwise deemed unfit by the JPR Commission.

But, Lopez said, “Something began to change about Arizona’s retention elections in 2020. For the first time, a major political party targeted judges for nonretention. All were retained. But in 2022, voters failed to retain three Maricopa County Superior Court judges. In other words, as many judges were removed by voters in one election as had been removed over the previous 48 years. Notably, two of the three judges had been recommended for retention by the JPR Commission—a first in the history of Arizona’s merit selection system. One of the judges was targeted not for his judicial performance, but rather for his prior associations and his work as an assistant A.G. in Arizona.”

In 2024, the merit selection system, including the retention election, became a major political issue. One side of the partisan/ideological divide cited an unpopular abortion decision, while the other side of the divide expressed dissatisfaction with the court’s election decisions. These political forces culminated in two primary events: (1) a significant campaign was marshaled to remove two members of the Arizona Supreme Court (2) and Proposition 137 was placed on the ballot to eliminate routine retention election for judges unless they committed various crimes, filed personal bankruptcy or were not recommended for retention by JPR. This proposition was rejected by nearly 80% of voters.

Lopez concluded his presentation by questioning the wisdom of politicizing the merit selection process. He quoted the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor who called the prospect of jettisoning the merit selection system “a great step backwards.”

---

Jo Ann Engelhardt is a member of the ABA Board of Governors representing District 8, a member of the board of the American Bar Foundation and a founding member of the ABA Crossroads Caucus.

---

This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Nearly 30 legal entities may leave Utah’s…

Access to Justice

Nearly 30 legal entities may leave Utah’s regulatory sandbox program after state tightens rules

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 4, 2025, 1:45 pm CST

At least 27 law firms and businesses may be leaving a Utah program that permits nontraditional legal services providers to operate in the state, including firms operated by nonlawyers, according to a published report.

The exodus follows a tightening of regulations governing the program, Reuters reports.

Under the new rules, program participants must show that they will reach Utah consumers currently underserved by the legal market, and that the impact is substantial compared to an entity’s overall reach. National and international companies serving only a small number of Utah residents don’t qualify.

Utah appellate court administrator Nick Stiles told Reuters that at least 27 participants in the program have left or may be leaving because they are withdrawing or being terminated because of the changes.

Only about a dozen participants remain in the program, according to Reuters. Records indicate that those companies use technology to lower legal costs or use nonlawyers to provide legal services in areas such as medical debt and domestic violence, the article reports.

Rocket Lawyer is among the companies withdrawing from the program, Reuters reports. The online legal services company is shifting efforts to Arizona after it won approval in the state’s program, said Jack Rives, president of Rocket Lawyer subsidiary Rocket Legal Professional Services, in a statement to Reuters. Rives is the former executive director of the ABA.

Rocket Lawyer was one of the first entities approved to participate in the Utah program.

Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.

There’s nothing fake about it. The legal industry is facing a big problem with deepfakes. Courtrooms are not yet flooded with a tsunami of deepfake evidence, but with this artificial intelligence-generated technology playing with great success on social media and in fraud schemes, it’s only a matter of time before deepfakes regularly drop into the exhibit list.

Cases with a deepfake component already include:

• United States v. Reffitt: A defendant’s counsel argued that the prosecution’s evidence could be a deepfake.
• Sz Huang v Tesla: A defendant’s counsel argued that video evidence of a party’s principal’s statements could be a deepfake.
• United States v. Doolin: A court allowed introduction of video evidence that the defense argued could have been a deepfake.
• Al-Qarqani v. Chevron Corp.: An attorney submitted an exhibit reciting an allegedly false timeline of facts published in a newspaper that does not exist.

According to March 2023 article the New York Times, many of the apps and tools used to create deepfakes are available to anyone with a smartphone and are free or inexpensive, making it far too easy to create or alter digital evidence.

Amplifying the problem is the fact that “right now, truth is starting to become a matter of degree,” says Maura R. Grossman, a research professor at the University of Waterloo and an attorney and e-discovery special master. Grossman points to examples, such as touching up an exhibit photo to turn a frown into a smile. This small change may be immaterial to a case—or not.

What about changing a few pixels to make it impossible to tell whether someone is holding a phone or a gun in their hand? Materially altered photo and video evidence will be thrown out, but misinformation based on reconfigured reality will undoubtedly be introduced into the courtroom and to juries.

“So much of the justice system relies on interpreting evidence and deciding how much weight to give it,” Grossman says. “And we’re now moving into a world where not only can we no longer rely on our senses to do that, but we may need experts, and that changes the cost. And for the judge, that creates delays and adds a whole new layer.”

Is the most efficient solution a technical or a legal solution?

The legal world is grappling with how to handle deepfake evidence, with procedural solutions currently getting public attention as technology solutions develop more slowly. Here are three approaches on how evidence suspected of being deepfake can be handled in the legal system.

1. Technical experts

Digital forensic experts use machine-learning capabilities in AI-based detection systems to inspect the authenticity of digital media. Deepfake videos with audio are the most difficult to identify because of the human tendency to overlook small discrepancies in a video and focus on the main idea.

Digital forensic experts can apply multimodal analysis to examine multiple data sources and combine techniques. These capabilities range from artifact detection, to frame-by-frame analysis and blink analysis, to luminance gradient analysis and pixel error analysis. After conducting necessary analyses, the expert can render an opinion as to whether the evidence is authentic or altered—or not—based on irregularities found.

Hiring a digital forensic expert can cost from a few hundred dollars for hourly consulting to several thousand dollars per project. For high-profile cases with significant legal implications, fees can be much greater.

Jerry Bui of Texas-based Right Forensics is also a consultant to Interpol. He tells us that, “Deepfakes force us to confront an uncomfortable truth: Seeing is no longer believing. As forensic experts, we’re not just authenticating evidence—we’re trying to safeguard the integrity of the justice system in an era where digital manipulation can rewrite reality.”

2. Court rules

U.S. courts are slowly moving to address deepfake evidence. At the Nov. 8, 2024, meeting of the Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, a committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the committee considered proposed Rule 901(c), authored by Grossman and Judge Paul Grimm, a retired federal judge and professor at the Duke University School of Law.

The rule, if adopted, would govern “potentially fabricated or altered electronic evidence,” reading: “If a party challenging the authenticity of computer-generated or other electronic evidence demonstrates to the court that a jury reasonably could find that the evidence has been altered or fabricated, in whole or in part, by artificial intelligence, the evidence is admissible only if the proponent demonstrates that its probative value outweighs its prejudicial effect on the party challenging the evidence.”

Grimm and Grossman’s proposed rule places burdens on the challenging and the offering parties, as well as the courts, helping to reduce the risk of exposing juries to deepfakes. It is one of several being considered by various judicial committees. Some experts think that no changes are needed to the rules of evidence.

Given the speed at which deepfake technology evolves and improves, changes in rules or procedures might not be useful. In the meantime, decisions will be meted out by the courts based on individual challenges as they arise.

3. Procedural approaches

Courts will use the existing rules to make decisions for the foreseeable future, having hearings on evidence. Judges will have to agree to analyze digital evidence, putting the burden on litigants to prove the legitimacy of the evidence in question, rather than placing the onus on the judge to decide whether the evidence is genuine or deepfake, admissible or not.

One of the critical issues that arises when considering the legal impact of deepfakes is cost—who pays to prove whether evidence is real or fake?

“This becomes an access-to-justice issue,” says Rebecca Delfino, the associate dean of clinical programs and experiential learning at the Loyola Law School at Loyola Marymount University. “In a perfect world, it would be taken care of in a criminal case. If the government wants to prove an audio-visual image is of the defendant robbing a bank, and the defendant claims it’s a deepfake, the government should have to pay for expert analysis because the burden of proof is on the prosecution. That may or may not happen; It depends on the available resources.

“But in the civil context, it’s going to be a significant problem,” Delfino continues. “Even for a simple example—such as the expression in a photograph being digitally altered from a frown to a smile—the individual will need to retain some type of expert.”

In family court, with its many pro se litigants, yet another reality exists—that a photo showing bruises would change someone’s life. Is it real or a deepfake? Who pays the expert to analyze it?

It’s just one of a multitude of questions that remains to be answered on how the legal world will adapt to a rising tide of deepfake evidence. We may not be at the end of reality, but deepfakes are definitely going to rock the legal world as we know it.

Practice tips

1. Look for items of evidence that are too good or too damaging to be true.
2. Deepfakes in social media tend to be video, audio and pictures. You can easily get automated optical character recognition to find text in pictures. You can also get machine transcription of audio and video. Each of these yields searchable text that you can use as a starting point to uncover suspicious material.
3. Plan your deposition or trial, so that you have your exhibit lists ready earlier than you do now. Implore the court to require your adversaries to do the same.
4. Evaluate the exhibits, paying close attention to those with audio, video or picture formats. Interview your witnesses, and challenge suspicious content. Don’t wait until the day of testimony.
5. Be prepared to engage a computer forensic examiner to evaluate the evidentiary quality of an item suspected of deepfake.

See also:

Is the legal system ready for AI-generated deepfake videos?

---

Chuck Kellner is a strategic discovery adviser at Everlaw. Kellner has worked as an expert on e-discovery protocols, proportionality and cost of e-discovery, findings on computer forensic examination, and requirements for defensible search and review.

---

Mind Your Business is a series of columns written by lawyers, legal professionals and others within the legal industry. The purpose of these columns is to offer practical guidance for attorneys on how to run their practices, provide information about the latest trends in legal technology and how it can help lawyers work more efficiently, and strategies for building a thriving business.

---

Interested in contributing a column? Send a query to [email protected].

---

This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.

In early 2015, Swapna Reddy volunteered for a week at the South Texas Family Residential Center, an immigration detention center near the U.S.-Mexico border that held thousands of asylum-seeking parents and their children.

That’s where Reddy met Suny Rodriguez Alvarado and her 7-year-old son, who had been at the center for four months after fleeing violence and persecution in Honduras. Reddy and three of her classmates—Conchita Cruz, Dorothy Tegeler and Liz Willis, who were members of Yale Law School’s Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic—later represented them in their immigration cases.

They not only helped Rodriguez and her son win her cases, but at her urging, they also founded the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project in May 2015 to assist other families facing wrongful detention and deportation.

“Regardless of how you feel about asylum-seekers, I think it’s hard to take issue with the idea that asylum-seekers deserve to know what the laws are and deserve to know how to follow them,” says Reddy, 38, whose parents emigrated from India and raised her and her brothers outside of Nashville, Tennessee.

In 2016, shortly before graduating from law school, Reddy and her co-founders took the project to the New York City-based Urban Justice Center. They employed what was then a unique model—rapid-response remote legal aid. They also built a private online community to connect asylum-seekers who would otherwise be geographically isolated.

“It’s hard to remember, but before the pandemic, the idea of remote work was pretty uncommon, and there was a lot of skepticism that it could be done effectively,” says Michael Wishnie, who co-directs Yale’s Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic and now serves on the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project’s board. “And yet they perceived that for new asylum-seekers who were settling in rural Georgia or Tennessee or Utah, there just wasn’t an option to provide on-the-ground legal services.”

The project provides its members—now more than 680,000 asylum-seekers from 175 countries—with access to a virtual legal help desk, news alerts and other critical resources as they navigate the immigration system. The Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project no longer offers direct representation; instead, it gives asylum-seekers the tools and know-how to take control of their own cases, says Reddy, who serves as the organization’s co-executive director alongside Cruz.

The Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, which has a remote team of more than 20 lawyers, technologists and other experts, also asks its members to help set its priorities and advocate to improve the immigration system. Reddy says a top concern for members now is lengthy delays for work permits and asylum interviews.

Among its collective wins, the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and its members last year successfully advocated for new regulations that will allow immigrants facing delays in work permit renewals to get a year and a half of additional employment authorization.

“An awesome thing about Swapna is she’s a Renaissance woman,” says Becca Heller, the co-founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project, who has known Reddy since law school. “She is a brilliant lawyer but also brilliant at technology. She’s been able to bring a lot of that to ASAP and think about how do tech and data and movement-building all intersect in this space, and how do you leverage that to something bigger?”

Legal Rebels Class of 2025

Rodrigo Camarena

Roy Ferguson

Joan Howarth and Deborah Jones Merritt

Oregon State Board of Bar Examiners

Swapna Reddy

Jacqueline Schafer

Noella Sudbury

In This Podcast:

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Should defendants without court-appointed…

Criminal Justice

Should defendants without court-appointed lawyers be released? Should charges be dropped? Judge weighs remedies

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 27, 2025, 3:06 pm CST

A Maine judge is considering how to remedy the state’s failure to provide lawyers to indigent defendants on a timely basis.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Maine is urging Judge Michaela Murphy of Kennebec County, Maine, to order the Maine Commission on Public Defender Services to provide counsel from the time that a defendant is charged. Murphy should give the organization 30 days to come up with an implementation plan, the ACLU said.

Defendants without a court-appointed lawyer after seven days should be released from jail, and those without a lawyer after 45 days should have their charges dismissed until a defense lawyer is available, the ACLU argued.

The Portland Press Herald (in stories here, here and here) and Maine Public Radio have coverage.

Murphy ruled Jan. 3 that Maine is violating the Sixth Amendment rights of criminal defendants who remain unrepresented after arraignment or first appearances. The judge had a three-day hearing focusing on remedies that ended Friday.

The state is arguing that remedies for the late appointment of a lawyer could be handled on an individual basis.

When Maine adopted a full-time public defender system in 2022, it was the last state to do so. But the state still has a hybrid system in which it relies on private attorneys to handle much of the work, the Portland Press Herald explains. The state also has a “lawyer of the day” program in which temporary lawyers represent defendants for their first court appearance when a permanent lawyer can’t be found.

In testimony on remedies, Walter McKee, an experienced criminal defense lawyer, said it was important to have permanent legal representation early in the case, according to Portland Press Herald.

“These are processes that are important to be dealt with, right from Day 1,” McKee said. “Law enforcement has had a significant amount of time to investigate and follow up. They’re way ahead of the defendant. Those delays are significant, right from the start.”

The ACLU case is State of Maine v. Robbins.

See also:

Defenseless: Lack of public defenders creates a crisis for indigent clients and increased caseloads for lawyers

Federal judge orders release of county’s unrepresented defendants, says problem is ‘complete tragedy’

Citing ‘Sixth Amendment nightmare,’ 9th Circuit allows pretrial release of defendants without lawyers

Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.

Although the 118th Congress may be remembered as one of the turbulent and least productive in modern history, the ABA Governmental Affairs Office achieved notable legislative successes through close collaboration with ABA leadership, entities and advocacy partners. These efforts were further complemented by substantial progress on various policy issues before federal agencies, commissions and other administrative bodies in the last two years that impact the legal profession, access to justice and the rule of law.

When it opened, the 118th Congress, which convened Jan. 3, 2023, and ended Jan. 3, 2025, faced an unprecedented challenge in electing a speaker of the House of Representatives, requiring nearly a week and 15 rounds of voting. The speaker ultimately served only 10 months before being ousted amid internal conflicts within the caucus. The Republicans had won control of the House after the 2022 midterm elections with a 222-213 majority, while the Democrats retained control of the Senate with a close 51-49 majority, creating a divided and polarized government in which political consensus became the exception, rather than the rule.

Ultimately, the 118th Congress passed only 209 bills in two years, compared to 350 bills in the 117th Congress and 344 in the 116th, gaining the dubious distinction of becoming one of the least productive Congresses in over three decades.

The 118th Congress did, however, manage to address issues critical to maintaining government operations and national security. It reached bipartisan consensus to suspend the debt ceiling until Jan. 1, 2025, and passed three short-term funding resolutions for fiscal year 2025 to avert a government shutdown and secure funding through March 14, 2025.

The Congress also reached a bipartisan consensus Dec. 17, when the Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass the annual National Defense Authorization Act to authorize funding for the Defense Department for fiscal year 2025. Then-President Joe Biden signed the NDAA into law Dec. 22, despite a controversial provision banning the military health program from covering gender-affirming care for the transgender children of service members.

ABA advocacy and engagement helped drive many successes during the 118th Congress, the most notable of which are described below.

 • Enactment of the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act (Public Law No: 118-194) signed into law by Biden on Dec. 23. The ABA Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, working in conjunction with the GAO, played a leading role in advocacy for the legislation, which will enhance the oversight and accountability of youth residential programs nationwide by requiring the Department of Health and Human Services to partner with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to identify the nature, prevalence, severity and scope of child abuse, neglect and deaths in youth residential programs.

 • Enactment of the Supporting America’s Children and Families Act (House Resolution 9076), marking a significant milestone in efforts to modernize the U.S. child welfare system. Working with the ABA Center on Children and the Law, the GAO advocacy included testimony to Congress, action by ABA members, and briefings with key staff and members from the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee over the last two years. Among other provisions, the law reauthorizes child welfare programs under Title IV-B of the Social Security Act, recognizes the importance of legal representation for all children and parents in child welfare cases, increases funding for the Court Improvement Program, enhances implementation of the Indian Child Welfare Act, and calls for states to prevent family separations that are due to child and family poverty by addressing concerns related to housing instability, transportation, food assistance and other basic needs through means other than foster care removals.

 • Increased funding for the Legal Services Corp. In contrast to several other federal programs, which saw funding reductions because of fiscal constraints, the ABA played a key role in ensuring that Congress recognized the value of the LSC in the 118th Congress. The LSC received $560 million in fiscal year 2023, a $71 million increase over fiscal year 2022. In the second session, the LSC received $560 million for fiscal year 2024, again avoiding the reduced funding imposed on other important federal programs.

 • Increased funding for federal public defense services in fiscal year 2024 and 2025. Following notice in fall 2023 of substantial cuts proposed to fiscal year 2024 appropriations for federal defense services that had already triggered a damaging hiring freeze and threatened hundreds of layoffs, the ABA mobilized to oppose the cuts for fiscal year 2024 and increase defense services funding for fiscal year 2025. The federal indigent defense system, comprised of full-time public defenders and private attorneys who take cases for below-market rates, is run and funded through the Defender Services Office of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The ABA’s advocacy efforts included a central focus at ABA Day 2024. Funding for defense services for fiscal year 2024 was increased, and proposed funding for fiscal year 2025 was modestly increased in the House and Senate when many federal programs were being cut.

 • Advocacy to prevent significant reductions or the elimination of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. In the past decade, the ABA has played a leading role in advocacy efforts on behalf of the PSLF program, resulting in a milestone this year. For the first time since 2014, neither Congress nor the administration proposed measures to end or scale back the program. Signed into law by Then-President George W. Bush in 2007, the PSLF program encourages new graduates to consider rewarding but lower-paying careers in public service by offering loan forgiveness after 10 years of public service and 10 years of loan repayments.

 • Continued ABA advocacy, along with state and local bar allies, to prevent the ENABLERS Act from being reintroduced or advancing in the 118th Congress. If enacted, the legislation would harm many lawyers and law firms by regulating them as “financial institutions” under the Bank Secrecy Act and requiring them to report privileged and other protected client information to the government.

Additional successes were achieved through agency action and executive order.

 • Improved federal sentencing guidelines by the U.S. Sentencing Commission in 2023 that now allow a person to seek and a judge to grant reductions in federal sentences based on “extraordinary and compelling circumstances.” The ABA president called for such changes in a March 10, 2023, letter to the commission, citing the ABA’s recently adopted Ten Principles on Reducing Mass Incarceration.

 • Strengthened due process rights of unaccompanied immigrant children. In response to some of the ABA’s comments, the Office of Refugee Resettlement included in its final Unaccompanied Children Program Foundational Rule a measure to strengthen a child’s due process rights while in a restrictive placement. The Unaccompanied Children Program Foundational Rule is a set of regulations established by the ORR outlining comprehensive standards for the care of unaccompanied immigrant children in its custody. The agency also clarified its definition and minimum standards of a “standard program,” a typical facility or care setting where unaccompanied children are housed, after comments by the ABA urging the addition of language to ensure that programs must be either state licensed or meet the requirements of state licensing.

 • Successful ABA advocacy, through the Intellectual Property Law Section, to a proposed rule by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, announced by the Biden administration in May 2024. The proposed rule, known as the Terminal Disclaimer Practice to Obviate Nonstatutory Double Patenting, sought to introduce significant changes to how inventors, startups and innovative companies navigate the patenting process that would have significantly curtailed an applicant’s patent rights and made the application process more costly for inventors. In December 2024, the Patent and Trademark Office announced its decision to withdraw the rule.

 • Effectively advocated for the Food and Drug Administration to drop blood donor restrictions that excluded people based on sexual orientation and replaced them with neutral ones that focused on specific risk factors. In March 2023, the ABA president sent a letter to the FDA supporting the proposed change, based on policy adopted in 2017.

 • Successfully urged Russian accountability for Ukrainian war crimes. In July 2023, Biden ordered U.S. agencies to begin to share evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine with the International Criminal Court. Then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland expanded on the Department of Justice’s plans to share this evidence in an address to the ABA House of Delegates at the ABA Annual Meeting in August 2023. The ABA president had urged this in a letter to Biden and in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

While there were significant accomplishments for the ABA during the 118th Congress, there is plenty of unfinished business as the 119th Congress gets underway. The GAO team is continuing to work with ABA leaders, entities and partner organizations to explore opportunities within Congress and the executive branch to champion ABA policy priorities related to the legal profession, access to justice and the rule of law.

Follow us on social media platforms @ABAGrassroots to learn more about significant legislative and governmental developments of interest to the ABA as they happen.

This report is written by the ABA Governmental Affairs Office and discusses advocacy efforts by the ABA relating to issues being addressed by Congress and the executive branch of the U.S. government.

In early 2015, Swapna Reddy volunteered for a week at the South Texas Family Residential Center, an immigration detention center near the U.S.-Mexico border that held thousands of asylum-seeking parents and their children.

That’s where Reddy met Suny Rodriguez Alvarado and her 7-year-old son, who had been at the center for four months after fleeing violence and persecution in Honduras. Reddy and three of her classmates—Conchita Cruz, Dorothy Tegeler and Liz Willis, who were members of Yale Law School’s Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic—later represented them in their immigration cases.

They not only helped Rodriguez and her son win her cases, but at her urging, they also founded the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project in May 2015 to assist other families facing wrongful detention and deportation.

“Regardless of how you feel about asylum-seekers, I think it’s hard to take issue with the idea that asylum-seekers deserve to know what the laws are and deserve to know how to follow them,” says Reddy, 38, whose parents emigrated from India and raised her and her brothers outside of Nashville, Tennessee.

In 2016, shortly before graduating from law school, Reddy and her co-founders took the project to the New York City-based Urban Justice Center. They employed what was then a unique model—rapid-response remote legal aid. They also built a private online community to connect asylum-seekers who would otherwise be geographically isolated.

“It’s hard to remember, but before the pandemic, the idea of remote work was pretty uncommon, and there was a lot of skepticism that it could be done effectively,” says Michael Wishnie, who co-directs Yale’s Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic and now serves on the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project’s board. “And yet they perceived that for new asylum-seekers who were settling in rural Georgia or Tennessee or Utah, there just wasn’t an option to provide on-the-ground legal services.”

The project provides its members—now more than 680,000 asylum-seekers from 175 countries—with access to a virtual legal help desk, news alerts and other critical resources as they navigate the immigration system. The Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project no longer offers direct representation; instead, it gives asylum-seekers the tools and know-how to take control of their own cases, says Reddy, who serves as the organization’s co-executive director alongside Cruz.

The Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, which has a remote team of more than 20 lawyers, technologists and other experts, also asks its members to help set its priorities and advocate to improve the immigration system. Reddy says a top concern for members now is lengthy delays for work permits and asylum interviews.

Among its collective wins, the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and its members last year successfully advocated for new regulations that will allow immigrants facing delays in work permit renewals to get a year and a half of additional employment authorization.

“An awesome thing about Swapna is she’s a Renaissance woman,” says Becca Heller, the co-founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project, who has known Reddy since law school. “She is a brilliant lawyer but also brilliant at technology. She’s been able to bring a lot of that to ASAP and think about how do tech and data and movement-building all intersect in this space, and how do you leverage that to something bigger?”

Legal Rebels Class of 2025

Rodrigo Camarena

Roy Ferguson

Joan Howarth and Deborah Jones Merritt

Oregon State Board of Bar Examiners

Swapna Reddy

Jacqueline Schafer

Noella Sudbury

In This Podcast:

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. KPMG’s bid to deliver legal services delayed…

Law Firms

KPMG’s bid to deliver legal services delayed as top Arizona court seeks more information

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 29, 2025, 3:21 pm CST

The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday pushed back a decision on whether to allow a new subsidiary of accounting company KPMG to practice law in the state.

KPMG Law US is seeking to operate through Arizona’s alternative business structure program, which allows nonlawyers to own or invest in law firms. The state supreme court has requested “additional information or clarification on aspects of the application” before reaching a decision, a court spokesperson told Bloomberg Law and Law.com.

The Arizona Supreme Court’s Committee on Alternative Business Structures had unanimously recommended approval of KPMG’s application earlier this month. The committee acted after a KPMG representative answered questions, including a query about how the firm would provide legal services in other states without violating ethics rules.

The new firm plans to work with staffing agencies and local lawyers to serve clients in other jurisdictions, KPMG compliance lawyer David Rizzo told the committee.

KPMG, which has more than 3,750 employees, already has legal practices in more than 80 jurisdictions.

Law360 recently spoke with Christian Athanasoulas, a U.S. tax partner and head of tax services at KPMG, about the accounting company’s plans.

KPMG Law US plans to hire Arizona-licensed lawyers who will deliver legal services in the state. The new firm does not intend to offer legal services to audit clients but will seek opportunities with clients served by its tax and advisory businesses.

“We’ve recognized that there is a need for services related to legal that are very much adjacent to the services we deliver today,” Athanasoulas said. “That’s not a full portfolio of legal services but rather a handful of pinpointed legal services that address client pain points and are adjacent to our existing portfolio and service offerings.”

Athanasoulas noted that Arizona wants to bring innovation to the legal profession. KPMG has already “invested incredible resources in technology, including AI,” and that investment could help KPMG Law US deliver “a better work product in a faster, more efficient way,” he said.

Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.

Many predictions have been made about the impact of artificial intelligence on the legal profession. From the demise of the billable hour to robots replacing lawyers, projections have run the gamut. Among the most optimistic is the suggestion that rapid advancements in AI could significantly improve access to justice by providing underserved communities with easily accessible and much-needed legal information.

As much as I would like this to be true, the cynic in me remains skeptical that altruism will ever truly trump capitalism. However, the growing momentum behind the recent wave of tools designed to close the access-to-justice gap might just prove me wrong.

How can AI improve access to justice?

There are several ways that AI software can potentially expand access to justice. First, AI tools designed to increase the efficiency of law firm workflows can enable lawyers to take on more cases and provide affordable and effective representation for their clients. This category of tools has been discussed in many of my prior columns and includes AI functionality integrated into software platforms that include document management, law practice management, legal billing, legal research, contract analysis, brief writing and more.

AI software can also be designed specifically for legal professionals who often represent underserved communities, such as those employed by legal aid organizations or attorneys who often handle assigned matters in criminal or family court. By streamlining their workflows and reducing redundant processes, AI technology can enable them to represent more clients.

Finally, AI-powered chatbots that provide legal information directly to the consumer are another way to reduce access-to-justice barriers. Navigating our complex court systems can be challenging even for experienced litigators, so user-friendly interfaces on court websites that simplify judicial processes and procedures can make all the difference.

Issues to consider when choosing AI software

I’ll discuss below the second and third categories and provide notable examples of initiatives and tools that rely on AI to expand access to justice—whether by enabling lawyers to better represent underserved populations or making legal information more accessible and understandable for unrepresented litigants.

Before we dive in, important factors to keep in mind when choosing AI tools for your legal organization include understanding that you’ll be entrusting confidential information to a third party because AI software is typically cloud-based. This means that you have an ethical obligation to thoroughly vet the technology provider by obtaining information on how the data will be handled by that company; where the servers on which the data will be stored are located; who will have access to it; and how often and when it will be backed up, among other things.

Because the software includes AI features, you’ll also want to explore issues that include accuracy rates, how the company protects your data, and whether your team’s data inputs are used to train AI models to improve responses.

Tools for public interest organizations

One way to ensure access to justice is to equip legal professionals who devote their careers to underserved populations with tools that will make their work easier and more effective. AI software companies have approached this aspirational goal in two very different ways.

First, a number of companies have developed AI-powered tools designed to meet the needs and budgets of legal services providers who represent underserved populations. The products address a variety of pain points, with each tool helping to reduce the challenges encountered by legal professionals juggling high caseloads. Notable examples include:

• LawDroid Copilot: A generative AI assistant with pricing starting at $19 per user per month; it can conduct legal research, draft and summarize documents and correspondence, and analyze motions.
• JusticeText: A software platform designed to help public defenders and criminal defense attorneys analyze and transcribe video and audio evidence.
• Descrybe.ai: A free generative AI search engine available in English and Spanish with a database of caselaw from more than 3 million state and federal judicial opinions.

Simultaneously, initiatives such as Thomson Reuters’ AI for Justice Legal Aid program and Everlaw for Good are helping bridge the access-to-justice gap by providing legal aid organizations and nonprofits with cost-effective access to advanced AI tools.

Programs such as these offer subsidized or free access to software that can significantly enhance efficiency. By equipping legal professionals with tools to streamline tasks such as research, drafting and evidence review, these initiatives enable nonprofits and pro bono programs to expand their representation of underserved populations while reducing costs and maximizing impact.

AI-powered tools for legal consumers

Another way to tackle access-to-justice challenges is to provide legal consumers with tools that provide legal information and possibly even assist them in solving their legal issues without needing to retain an attorney. Certain legal matters are simple enough that people may be able to effectively represent their interests in court if assisted by AI tools designed for their needs.

For example, the tools below were developed to aid underserved communities by providing user-friendly platforms that leverage AI technology to simplify complex legal processes. These platforms provide clear and accessible information, enabling people to take actionable steps in resolving their issues. By reducing barriers to understanding and navigating the legal system, these innovations help bridge the access-to-justice gap for those who might otherwise struggle to afford or access traditional legal services. Examples include:

• Beagle+: A contract analysis tool that uses AI to simplify the review and interpretation of complex legal agreements.
• Hello Divorce: A platform designed to streamline the divorce process, offering self-help tools, legal education and optional access to attorneys.
• JustFix: A tenant-focused app that helps renters document housing issues and take action against landlords violating their rights.

Generative AI chatbots are also emerging as powerful tools that help courts and legal aid organizations bridge the access-to-justice gap. These tools use conversational AI to provide self-represented litigants with easy access to legal information, procedural guidance and court resources tailored to their needs.

By automating routine interactions and simplifying complex legal processes, these chatbots reduce court staff’s administrative burdens while empowering people to navigate the legal system more effectively.

Here are some examples of generative AI-powered chatbots currently in use by courts and public interest organizations:

• Legal Information Assistant: A generative AI chatbot offered by Legal Aid of North Carolina that provides answers to legal questions in English and Spanish.
• Nevada Supreme Court’s AI chatbot: This generative AI tool offers legal guidance in multiple languages, helping people understand their legal options and procedural steps.
• Missouri Tenant Help: This online screening tool helps Missouri tenants determine eligibility for legal assistance before connecting with program staff.
• SANDI (Self-Help Assistant Navigator for Digital Interactions): A chatbot on the 11th Judicial Circuit of Florida’s website that provides AI-powered assistance to people navigating the legal system.
• Rentervention: An AI virtual assistant launched by the Law Center for Better Housing, the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation and the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois that helps tenants in Illinois access information and resources on housing rights.
• Roxanne: An AI-powered tool designed to assist tenants in addressing housing repair issues effectively in New York.

AI technology holds tremendous potential to reduce the access-to-justice gap by empowering legal professionals and the public with innovative tools and resources. The software discussed above reflects a growing commitment to developing AI for social good despite challenges that include data security, ethical considerations and lack of profitability.

Whether these tools will fully live up to expectations remains to be seen even as current initiatives offer a promising glimpse of what might be possible. Only the passage of time will tell whether AI will ultimately deliver on its potential to make justice more accessible for those who truly need it.

However, as AI-powered solutions continue to evolve, their potential to bridge the access-to-justice gap grows stronger—offering hope that technology can play a meaningful role in delivering legal support to those who need it most.

---

Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York-based attorney, author and journalist, and she is the principal legal insight strategist at MyCase, a company that offers legal practice management software for small firms. She is the nationally recognized author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers and is co-author of Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier, both published by the American Bar Association. She writes regular columns for ABAJournal.com and Above the Law, has authored hundreds of articles for other publications, and regularly speaks at conferences regarding the intersection of law and emerging technologies. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @nikiblack, or she can be reached at [email protected].

---

This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.