CIVIL WAR

The legal industry's monopoly on advice ensures only the rich can afford a lawyer. Now, an unlikely coalition is fighting to change that-—and it might just succeed.

- Chris Pomorski

ONE DAY about 10 years ago, Alicia Mitchell-Mercer experienced one of those moments that change the course of a person's life. She was a longtime paralegal in Charlotte, North Carolina, working for a consulting company that helps law firms with project management. In the lobby of a client firm that day, she overheard a troubling conversation.

A receptionist was explaining the firm's rates to a caller who was clearly in distress. Ray (a pseudonym) was a single father and fast-food manager with three girls between the ages of 7 and 12. His estranged common-law wife, struggling with addiction, had moved in with a man who'd done prison time. Ray had heard she was planning to leave town with him and take the kids, and he was desperate to prevent it. Despite the urgency of his situation, the receptionist was telling Ray the firm would be unable to help-he couldn't afford their fees.

Mitchell-Mercer reached out to Ray. It turned out he'd already been to the sheriff's office and had consulted with a court advocate. Both said he needed an emergency custody order-and a lawyer. She knew how to help him, but she couldn't do it on her own. Laws in all 50 states forbid what's known as "unauthorized practice of law." UPL statutes generally preclude the provision of legal services by nonlawyers, even old hands like Mitchell-Mercer, who, in addition to her decades as a paralegal, has served in state and national legal organizations and volunteered as a court-appointed child guardian.