How Licensure-Focused Research Fits into Broader Access-to-Justice Discussions

By Kelly Edwards, PhD, and Joanne Kane, PhDIntroduction

Concerns about access to justice are not new. For decades, courts, regulators, bar organizations, and scholars have documented that individuals and small businesses struggle to obtain legal help for everyday problems.1 These concerns persist despite substantial growth in the lawyer population and sustained efforts to expand legal aid, pro bono services, and court-based assistance.2 Against this backdrop, debates about access to justice have repeatedly returned to a familiar question: Are there enough lawyers?

This focus on lawyer supply is understandable. Licensure is one of the most visible and durable features of the legal regulatory system. When access-to-justice concerns arise (and persist), policy discussions often revisit licensure requirements and consider how they fit within broader efforts to improve the availability of legal services.3 As a result, research on lawyer supply has come to occupy a prominent place in access-to-­justice discussions. Empirical studies examining bar exam standards, passing scores, and licensing rules are frequently invoked as evidence for or against reform.4 Policy debates often treat findings about lawyer supply as proxies for broader access-to-­justice outcomes, with the assumption that increasing the number of lawyers will translate into increased access for the public, as well as improved outcomes through that wider access.

Yet this assumption warrants closer examination. Research on lawyer supply addresses important regulatory concerns, but it does not necessarily answer all the questions that access-to-justice debates routinely ask of it in a direct way. In particular, studies focused on lawyer licensure tend to examine outcomes such as professional misconduct and discipline.5 These outcomes cannot speak directly to whether people can obtain timely, affordable, and effective legal help.

Research on lawyer supply and research on access to justice often appear side by side in policy discussions, but these bodies of knowledge do not address the same questions. At the same time, a related body of research has developed largely outside the licensure literature.6 This research focuses less on the number of lawyers and more on how people experience legal problems, whether they recognize those problems as legal, where they turn for help, and what kinds of assistance lead to actual resolution. From this perspective, lawyer counts alone do not easily explain persistent access gaps, nor do licensure regulatory changes close such gaps. Research on lawyer supply and research on access to justice often appear side by side in policy discussions, but these bodies of knowledge do not address the same questions.

This article argues that lawyer supply is best understood as one component within a larger system that shapes access to justice. That system includes not only licensure rules but also workforce structure, service delivery models, and the ways that people encounter and navigate legal problems. Increasing the number of licensed lawyers may influence access-related ­outcomes under certain conditions, but it does so in an indirect way and in interaction with other regulatory, organizational, and market forces. Treating lawyer supply as the main determinant for access to justice risks both overstating what licensure reform can accomplish and obscuring other (potentially more direct) avenues for improving public access to legal help. By situating research on lawyer supply within a broader conceptual framework for understanding access to justice, this article seeks to clarify what different strands of research do—and do not—tell us. Doing so can support more precise, evidence-informed conversations about licensure, regulation, and the range of policy decisions relevant to addressing unmet legal needs.

Questions Research on Lawyer Supply Is Designed ​to Answer

Research on lawyer supply is primarily concerned with a specific set of regulatory questions: Who becomes a lawyer? Under what conditions do they become a lawyer? What implications does this have for public access and public protection? Much of the empirical literature on lawyer supply focuses on entry controls, most notably the bar examination and related licensing requirements, including, recently, the role of ABA accreditation. Studies in this area examine how variations in exam difficulty, passing scores, retake limits, and other entry standards affect who is admitted to practice and whether those standards are associated with downstream indicators of professional misconduct or discipline.7 The main research question here is not access to justice per se, but whether licensure operates as an effective screening mechanism for minimum competence.

From a regulatory perspective, these are appropriate and necessary questions. Bar examiners and courts must decide on minimum competency standards, balancing the risk of admitting unqualified practitioners against the cost of excluding potentially capable candidates. Empirical research that sheds light on the downstream effects of how standards function helps inform those judgments and supports public confidence in the integrity of the licensing process. At the same time, this body of research is not designed to explain ­access-to-justice outcomes. Entry-focused studies rarely examine whether legal services are affordable, whether people experiencing legal problems can obtain help when they need it, or whether licensed lawyers are available to serve individuals from marginalized or low socioeconomic backgrounds—nor do they assess how legal capacity is distributed across practice areas, geographic regions, or service models.8 As a result, research on lawyer supply offers limited insight into whether legal capacity is deployed in ways that address widespread unmet legal needs.

There are important exceptions. For example, the Arizona Lawyer Apprentice Program explicitly links its entry pathway to goals related to expanding access to justice by increasing the number of licensed practitioners working with underserved communities.9 Such initiatives illustrate that entry reform can be designed with access objectives in mind. Even so, the bulk of empirical research on licensure remains focused on screening effectiveness and public protection rather than on broader access-to-justice outcomes. Recognizing that distinction clarifies how research on lawyer supply should be interpreted within access-to-justice discussions. 

A Multilevel Framework for Understanding Access to Justice

Appropriate interpretation of research on lawyer supply within access-to-justice debates necessitates clarifying the level of analysis at which it operates. Access to justice is produced by a system, not by any single regulatory decision. To illuminate how different policy components operate (and why they often yield different results), this article conceptualizes access to justice as emerging from four interrelated levels: (1) licensure and entry controls; (2) workforce composition and structure; (3) service delivery and market organization; and (4) people’s lived access to justice.

Licensure and Entry Controls

The first level concerns eligibility for practice. It addresses the criteria under which individuals are admitted to the profession and the standards used to evaluate minimum competence. Research at this level typically examines whether licensure functions as intended—that is, as a screening mechanism designed to reduce the risk of serious professional misconduct and to protect the public.

Empirical work by Kyle Rozema10 and by Robert Anderson IV and Derek T. Muller11 exemplifies this approach. These studies investigate whether more restrictive bar examination standards are associated with differences in ­subsequent outcomes, including disciplinary actions and lawyer supply counts. For example, using California State Bar disciplinary records and ­publicly available proxies for bar performance, Anderson and Muller report that lower inferred bar performance is associated with higher probability of disciplinary actions over time, and they use this association to project greater expected disciplinary actions in jurisdictions with lower passing scores.

Other scholarship at this level examines whether traditional exam-based pathways are necessary or optimal. Milan Markovic evaluates diploma privilege against the public-protection rationale for bar exams, combining a historical account of how entry requirements have evolved with analyses of attorney-misconduct indicators.12 Catherine Martin Christopher proposes a “modern diploma privilege” model in which licensing authorities define competencies for entry-level practice and partner with law schools to assess those competencies over time, with ongoing oversight built into the pathway.13 Together, Markovic and Christopher’s contributions remain focused on the structure of entry into the profession and on how different licensure pathways might better align with regulatory goals.

Research at this level does not generally address how licensed legal capacity is subsequently distributed or deployed. Its conclusions bear on eligibility for practice. They do not, without additional assumptions, evaluate how services are delivered or whether individuals experiencing legal problems obtain meaningful and timely assistance.

Workforce Composition and Structure

The second level shifts to the structure of the justice workforce. This includes not only licensed attorneys but also paraprofessionals, court-based staff, and regulated nonlawyer providers operating within defined scopes of practice. The relevant question at this level is not who is eligible for bar admission in general, but who is authorized to perform particular ​justice-­related functions and under what constraints.

Studies of the New York City Court Navigators Program and related initiatives illustrate this level of analysis. Evaluations document how trained nonlawyer service providers, when appropriately supervised and regulated, can assist litigants in defined settings.14 Similarly, scholarship on ​unauthorized-practice-of-law reform ­analyzes how scope-of-practice rules expand or limit nonlawyer providers’ participation.15

Restrictions on ownership, investment, and organizational form…may limit experimentation, reduce access to capital, and inhibit scalable models, regardless of how many lawyers are licensed.

Related work shows that regulatory design and institutional governance influence workforce reforms. In that sense, expanding nonlawyer entry into the profession does not necessarily alter how ­justice-related work is allocated. For example, Keith Swisher cautions that how jurisdictions regulate nonlawyer providers (especially the ethics rules they impose) can affect whether these roles are sustainable or scalable.16 Samuel A. Thumma, drawing on Arizona’s reforms in this space, similarly illustrates that workforce change often depends on court governance and implementation choices.17 Thus, even if licensure standards were adjusted, the composition of the justice workforce and its alignment with unmet legal needs would depend on ­additional regulatory choices.

Service Delivery and Market Organization

The third level turns from workforce roles to the production and delivery system for legal services. This level focuses on how assistance is produced, financed, priced, and scaled. In her extensive research on legal market design, Gillian K. ­Hadfield argues that ­access-to-justice failures reflect features of legal market regulation (not simply an insufficient number of lawyers) because current regulatory structures constrain innovation in organization and service delivery.18 Her focus is not limited to traditional law firms; it extends to the broader set of provider and business models through which legal services might be delivered. Restrictions on ownership, investment, and organizational form (including limits on non­lawyer ownership, multidisciplinary entities, and technology-enabled delivery platforms) may limit experimentation, reduce access to capital, and inhibit scalable models, regardless of how many lawyers are licensed.

Rebecca L. Sandefur and Lucy Ricca describe regulatory reforms in jurisdictions such as Utah and Alaska that change how legal services can be offered and managed, focusing on regulating provider organizations and using data to monitor consumer outcomes.19 They argue that allowing different business structures and ownership agreements, and permitting new service-delivery models, can expand access to legal help beyond the traditional lawyer-only model. They also report early descriptive information from these initiatives, such as how many people were served and whether there were signs of consumer harm, that regulators are using to evaluate the reforms.

People’s Lived Access to Justice

The fourth level centers on how individuals experience legal problems and whether they obtain assistance. Legal needs surveys and qualitative research document that many civil legal problems never reach lawyers or courts. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Making Justice ­Accessible Project and the ­American Bar Foundation’s Access to Justice Research Initiative synthesize ­evidence showing that recognition, timing, trust, and affordability influence whether individuals seek help.20

Sandefur and Matthew Burnett emphasize that access outcomes depend on whether assistance is embedded in contexts that those experiencing legal problems can recognize and navigate.21 Sara Sternberg Greene further demonstrates how race, class, and prior institutional experiences shape patterns of help-seeking.22

Conclusion

Viewed through this ​dynamic-­systems framework, research that is often treated as conflicting can be understood as examining different segments of one broad system. Understanding where each body of research operates allows for more precise interpretation and more productive discussion about the role of licensure in broader access-to-justice efforts. Evidence about entry standards and disciplinary outcomes does not, by itself, resolve questions about access to justice. Nor do findings of unmet legal needs establish that altering licensure standards will increase the availability, affordability, or effectiveness of legal services. Claims of that kind depend on assumptions about how changes at one level will affect conditions at others.

…research that is often treated as conflicting can be understood as examining different segments of one broad system.

This point is especially salient when considering proposals to replace traditional bar exams with diploma privilege, curricular pathways, or supervised practice. It does not necessarily follow that removing an examination requirement will produce more licensed lawyers, greater access, or better outcomes. Even in a diploma-privilege jurisdiction, eligibility remains contingent on specified coursework, academic performance, and related criteria. Decisions about grade thresholds, required courses, and experiential components should formally function as other forms of standard setting. Regulatory responsibility may differ from one institution to another (e.g., from bar admission authorities to law schools or accrediting bodies), but the underlying questions about minimum competence and public protection remain.

Law schools are part of this system as well because many licensing standards operate through legal education. Accreditation requirements, curricular expectations, grading practices, and supervised clinical experiences, among other features of legal education, can all help determine which candidates are eligible to apply for admission and how readiness for practice is demonstrated. A related body of access-to-justice scholarship also argues that law schools can contribute more directly to closing the justice gap, including by adopting an access-to-justice mission, strengthening clinics and other supervised service models, and collaborating with local and state ­access-to-justice efforts that connect innovations in practice to evaluation and implementation.23  Schools also shape the system through tuition levels and graduate debt burden, which influence the practice settings new lawyers can realistically choose and the pricing models they can sustain.24 In turn, these financial realities can limit the supply of lawyers who can offer lower-cost services, which may affect how much meaningful assistance is available to people with unmet legal needs.

Discussions about access to justice therefore benefit from specifying the objective as clearly as possible. Are we concerned that people do not recognize their problems as legal? That they cannot identify or locate a provider? That legal services are geographically inaccessible? That costs are prohibitive? Or that the help available does not improve outcomes? Each concern implicates different parts of the broader system this article considered.

Questions about professional preparation likewise involve multiple safeguards. Graduation from an accredited law school offers one indication of general preparation. A bar exam, where used, provides an independent assessment of minimum competence. Character and fitness review provides an additional check related to professional responsibility. Experiential education, supervised practice, continuous learning, and specialization further shape assistance quality. No single component guarantees effective help; each contributes in different ways to the likelihood of meaningful resolution.

Improving access to justice therefore requires attention to the mechanisms that connect these levels. Licensure is one component within a broader ecosystem. Its influence on access depends on workforce design, service models, institutional incentives, and the preferences and individual needs of those facing legal problems. Efforts to address unmet legal needs are most likely to be productive when they specify the goal at issue and situate proposed reforms within the larger, evolving system in which legal services are created, regulated, and delivered.

This article originally appeared in The Bar Examiner print edition, Summer 2026 (Vol. 95, No. 2), pp. 6–12.

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