For those of you who won’t be joining us at ReInvent Law Silicon Valley this coming week, I’ll try to do some posting on the topics that might be most interesting to LEF readers.  One talk by Richard Granat of DirectLaw gets to the heart of Model Rule 5.4 and the recent announcements about private investment in legal service providers (see, e.g., Axiom Scores $28 Million Round of Funding).

Here is Richard’s description of his talk, Private Investment in US Legal Services–New Business Models:

I am interested in how to get private capital into law firms, given the restrictions of ABA Professional Rule 5.4 which prohibits non-lawyers from taking an equity interest in a law firm. Are there ways of getting around this rule? What kind of law firm structures can be created that enable private equity investment? Is it wise to enable private investment in law firms? Will it ever happen in the United States given the present position of the ABA and  state bar associations? What can small and medium size law firms do to access capital to make them more competitive? Are Clearspire and AxiomLaw ethically compliant models that can be replicated?

Richard previews more of the ReInvent Law Silicon Valley talks at his eLawyering Blog.

The complete line up of our 40+ speakers for ReInvent Law Silicon Valley is here.

(Originally posted at the Legal Ethics Forum.)