Faced with a persistent and growing gap between the need for pro-bono legal services and the human and financial resources necessary to provide adequate representation for everyone who needs it, the Texas Supreme Court is proposing two new categories of non-lawyer licensure to help address the problem.
The process was initiated by a letter from Justice Busby, the Court’s liaison, to the Texas Access to Justice Commission. The Commission created a working group headed by Justice Michael Massengale and Austin attorneys Lisa Bowlin Hobbes and Kennon Wooten to work with the Commission and the National Center for State Courts on creating a licensing structure for certain paraprofessionals to provide a limited range of legal services in three areas of the most pressing need: family law, consumer debt, and estate-planning and probate law. The proposal also allows for the licensing of court-access assistants to provide certain legal services in civil suits in justice courts. The proposal is open for public comment until November 1, 2024, and the Court expects to adopt the new rules by December 1, 2024.
You may review the proposed rules here: https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1458990/249050.pdf
