But the echo from the history of legal aid that Tobin notes raises an important question about access: Does the end of full-service representation mean an even bigger hurdle for the poor—especially those, like Herrera’s clients, without ready access to (or comfort with) technology, or people who are hampered by mental health problems or intellectual disabilities?

It shouldn’t. If technology and new models like Herrera’s and Moore’s are able to bring costs down and expand access for a large number of people, the access problem for the smaller number of hardest cases should be easier to solve. For one, by drawing more clients into the paying market, firms like Rocket Lawyer may free up much-needed bandwidth in legal aid, where firms are already forced, as Tobin puts it, to make excruciating “Sophie’s Choice decisions about which cases to take.” Second, the march of technology can cascade into legal aid, improving access there, too. Just a few years back, New Hampshire’s Legal Advice & Referral Center (NHLA’s sister organization) installed new phone- and web-based systems that brought its case production numbers to some of the highest in the country.

Moore, for his part, recognizes that, as his company grows, legal help for those who can’t swing even Rocket Lawyer’s rates will be an issue he’ll need to address. “Right now,” he admits, “we do steer people to legal-aid societies if they do not have any ability to pay, but I would be the first to say that we can do more … and I fully intend to do more in terms of supporting pro bono legal services by our lawyer network.”

In the meantime, the slow rise of Moore or Herrera’s hybrid model—part lawyer, part layman, part computer, in varying ratios—offers hope for a legal market in which the non-rich can afford to buy, though they may have to invest some sweat equity in the purchase. And in that sense, the legal market—perhaps because of its complexity, or perhaps because, as Herrera notes, lawyers simply “aren’t trained to be entrepreneurs”—is just catching up with other new-economy markets for the middle class. After all, TurboTax and H&R Block offer us affordable tax preparation services, so long as we’re willing to serve as the clerks to our electronic CPA. Travelocity and Kayak offer us more affordable travel, so long as we’re willing to serve as our own electronic travel agents. For most of us—tenants with sleazy landlords, small business owners, people in bad marriages—these sweat-equity options represent progress. And so long as they don’t harm—and instead help—the worst off, these options are progress.

As this new legal model slowly gains footing, it’s worth pausing to consider the new, partial-service attorney—less a sovereign champion and more a supervisory ally. Taking up this latter role, the limited-scope lawyer resonates with Harvard law professor Charles Fried’s decades-old idea of the lawyer, like the doctor, as “special purpose friend.” Fried, in his essay, was arguing for the lawyer’s moral legitimacy in preferring his or her client’s interests to others’ (even if it means harming those others’ interests), but the simile has expressive power beyond Fried’s philosophical mission—it conjures To Kill a Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch more than Chicago’s Billy Flynn. Fried conceived of the legal relationship as one in which the “friendship systematically runs all one way,” but the collaboration entailed by the limited-scope model renders the relationship a two-way street. In a marketplace that’s felt closed off to most non-rich Americans, it sounds, if not perfect, like a fair deal.

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