This is the final instalment of a three-part series on access to legal services. In Part 1, I argued that the crisis facing access to legal services is precipitated by a fundamental mismatch between supply…

In this three-part series, I make the case that the legal profession needs nurses. More to the point, we need to create new categories of legal professionals who are not lawyer, but who are qualified to provided limited legal advice and even representation within a well-defined scope. These non-lawyer professionals would be regulated by a system similar to that of colleges or associations of nurses in the health industry. In Part 1 of the series, I explore the shortcomings of the “traditional” approach to promoting access to legal services (that is, increasing the capacity of legal aid and pro bono). I argue that these approaches are cost-prohibitive from a government viewpoint and will therefore prove inadequate in addressing the underlying shortage of lawyers.