From self-help books to LegalZoom to generative AI, the history of the unauthorized practice of law shows how each new tool for expanding legal access has forced regulators to confront the same question: What happens when technology clashes with the legal profession's rules?
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Unauthorized practice of law rules have repeatedly come into conflict with new forms of legal self-help 鈥� Each major wave of consumer-facing legal assistance has tested the boundaries of UPL doctrine and forced courts, regulators, and lawmakers to decide where legal information ends and legal advice begins.
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Technology has expanded access to legal information faster than regulation has adapted 鈥� LegalZoom and other justice tech companies showed that legal tools could be delivered at scale, while UPL doctrine often struggled to accommodate new models of legal assistance designed for consumers with unmet legal needs.
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The rise of AI makes the old UPL framework increasingly inadequate 鈥� As GenAI tools provide legal research, document assistance, and guided analysis directly to the public, regulators should move beyond the LegalZoom-era battles and consider a framework focused on consumer protection, transparency, and actual harm.
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This two-part blog series examining how regulators, the legal profession, and individual litigants are looking at the unauthorized practice of law (UPL) first looks at the history of UPL and then suggests a consumer protection-based method of regulation to replace today鈥檚 supplier-based regulations.
With three-quarters of state court cases including at least one self-represented party, and with 92% of Americans with a legal problem not getting the legal help they need, it鈥檚 not surprising that the unauthorized practice of law (UPL) is a concept that鈥檚 not far from people鈥檚 minds.
It does not have to be this way, of course, and there are solutions to the thornier issues with UPL; but first, it may be helpful to understand how we got to this place and how UPL has evolved.
Legal self-help in a pre-Internet world
In the late-1800s, before UPL was formally articulated, John Wells published “Every Man His Own Lawyer”, a widely circulated guide that explained legal principles and provided practical forms. Its popularity reflected sustained public demand for accessible legal information. Around the same time, the organized bar began to emerge, along with more structured efforts to define and protect the boundaries of legal practice.
By the early-1900s, auto clubs were providing legal help to their members, demonstrating an early form of a prepaid legal services plan that exists to this day, but with typically a wider array of services. As would be the case in later years, an economic downturn soon brought a fight as lawyers used threats of UPL to fight competition. Not long after the Great Depression began, the ABA formed the Committee on Unauthorized Practice of Law, and a wave of litigation ensued to essential end the offering from auto clubs.
Similar dynamics appeared later in the 20th century. In the 1960s, soon before the recession of the 1970s, Norman Dacey鈥檚 “How to Avoid Probate!” offered readers tools to manage estate planning without engaging a lawyer. The response included investigations and attempts to suppress the book. Courts ultimately clarified that providing general legal information, even when presented in a structured and practical format, does not constitute individualized legal advice and falls within the scope of protected speech.
Tech enters the equation
By the 1990s, these ideas had moved into a digital environment. Companies such as Nolo and Parsons Technology translated legal forms and guidance into software and the Texas State Bar sued in federal court. Although the bar initially prevailed, a legislative response introduced a software exception to UPL that remains in effect today, reflecting an early acknowledgment that technology-based tools required a different regulatory lens.
By early 2000s, LegalZoom extended these concepts at scale. By automating document creation across a wide range of legal needs, it brought structured legal tools directly to consumers in a more accessible format. While not the first provider of self-help legal resources, it demonstrated how technology could move online and operationalize these services at a national level 鈥� not surprisingly, this effort would face resistance at a whole new level.
Launched in 2001, LegalZoom argued that it just represented the modern evolution of books like those written by Wells and Dacey. The response from the legal establishment was ferocious. It began with state bar inquiries trying to understand what LegalZoom was offering, and as the Global Financial Crisis began in 2007, class action lawsuits and regulatory challenges followed.
These suits sought significant damages without alleging specific consumer harm, creating substantial pressure on a still-developing sector and signaled resistance to new models of service delivery. The objections were ostensibly about consumer protection, while more reflecting concerns about changes to established structures in the legal profession.
LegalZoom won some of the class actions and settled others on friendly terms, typically agreeing to limit the use of certain words in its advertising, paying some class member claims, offering its attorney-access plans on a complimentary basis, and paying attorneys鈥� fees.
Supreme Court precedents
Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions would prove highly important to the UPL battles. The first came in in which the Court ruled that companies could include class action waivers in arbitration provisions. Soon after, LegalZoom began implementing this type of arbitration provision to coincide with the resolution of several major class actions to make sustaining a class action against it in the future more difficult.
The second Supreme Court ruling to impact UPL came in in which the Court ruled that a state occupational licensing board cannot claim state-action antitrust immunity if a controlling number of its decision-makers are active market participants in the occupation it regulates and the state does not actively supervise the board. This decision put state bars at risk.
The fight that changed the conversation was the LegalZoom lawsuit against the North Carolina State Bar (NCSB) that was modeled after the result in the Dental Board matter. LegalZoom had built a prepaid legal services plan offering attorney access to its customers 鈥� a narrower version of what the auto clubs had offered in the past. These types of plans historically were supported by the ABA and National Association of Attorneys General, but a few states pushed back on LegalZoom offering one. Most notably, North Carolina objected and LegalZoom sued the NCSB for a declaratory judgment that it was not engaged in UPL as well as on antitrust and other grounds, leading to a settlement and cooperative legislation that cleared the way for LegalZoom to continue operations, including launching its legal plan, in that state.
Upon the case’s conclusion, University of Tennessee College of Law professor , LegalZoom fought the North Carolina Bar 鈥� and LegalZoom won. Barton opined that the 鈥淪outh Carolina [where the Supreme Court had found LegalZoom practices lawful] and North Carolina precedents will likely end all state bar action on UPL.鈥� He was largely correct, as future LegalZoom and other industry skirmishes would not amount to much, allowing the industry to thrive.
The future of UPL
Today, the LegalZoom fights look quaint. It was essentially a fight over the online equivalents to form books, when a few years later AI would explode onto the scene and upend everything. We now have everything from foundation models such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to legal specialists available to the public and generating research memos at the push of a button.
This, perhaps, brings us back to where we started. And now may be the time to ask whether a new system of regulation is needed around UPL, because no other justice tech company should have to run the gauntlet of fights that LegalZoom faced.
In the next part of this blog series, we will look at how the issues raised by UPL in the AI age may require a new regulatory solution, possibly one based on a consumer protection model that would replace today鈥檚 supplier-based regulations
