We, the undersigned, call upon the American Bar Association (ABA) to cease using the term "nonlawyer," and instead engage in the work and dialogue to determine a more appropriate term that more accurately respects and acknowledges the wide range of contributions and roles of all legal professionals.

So begins a petition sent this week to the American Bar Association by Olga Mack, a fellow at the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, and Damien Riehl, a vice president of vLex.

The petition, as David Lat argues in Bloomberg Law this week, signals a shift in the legal profession and the need for language to evolve.

"The term 'nonlawyer' has long separated people who lack a law degree from those who hold one," Mack and Riehl write. "While seemingly innocuous, this term subtly (or overtly) reinforces an artificial hierarchy. It implies a binary division between lawyers and others, inadvertently (or purposefully) marginalizing the invaluable contributions of our legal support professionals, paralegals, and other professional colleagues (e.g., COOs, CFOs, CTOs)."

And the case seems to have swayed Lat. He writes that "I’m open to finding some new term or terms to replace 'nonlawyer.' As both a lawyer and a writer, I’m a big believer in clear communication. And in our conversation, Damien Riehl persuaded me that “nonlawyer” is problematic—not so much because it’s offensive, but because it’s overbroad and imprecise."

Rise of the ALSP

Over the last two decades, the legal field has undergone a significant shift with the rise of Legal Operations departments and Alternative Legal Service Providers like Lawtrades. The shift began largely in the early 2000s with the rise of e-discovery. As firms began to outsource e-discovery work, they also began to reconsider the use of outside help. “Many in-house lawyers 15 years ago might not have considered something like an ALSP even to be on the table when considering their resourcing needs," Kurt Grasinger of Booz Allen Hamilton told Harvard Law. "Now, it’s almost an expectation of management that they consider the full universe of options—including ALSPs—to solve each problem.” As Reuters notes, between 2015 and 2021 alone, the ALSP market grew 145% to over $21 billion. In other words, ALSPs are becoming an essential part of the legal industry.

THE VERDICT:‍

The times they are a-changing and language is part of that change. "Nonlawyer" does suggest a certain diminishment of the role of a legal professional who is not a lawyer, but may refer to Chief Legal Officer or head of the Legal Operations department—roles that are clearly not trivial. It's time for our terms to reflect the evolving nature of in-house legal departments and their use of external legal aid.