Washington, DC -- In a major victory for consumers, a ruling yesterday by the Supreme Court of Kentucky struck down a Kentucky Bar Association decision that real estate closings must be handled by lawyers alone. The decision resonated with a nationwide trend toward protecting consumers against a legal monopoly over services that do not demand a lawyer.

The case was brought by several organizations of nonlawyers who held a stake in Kentucky real estate closings. In response to the KBA declaration that only lawyers were qualified to perform real estate closings, these "lay closing agents" - who included real estate agents and mortgage lenders - argued that they were capable providers of closing services. The Court agreed, stating that the "ministerial" and "administrative" acts involved with real estate closings in no way required specific legal knowledge.

"It was absurd of the KBA to declare that a recent law school graduate having just passed the Kentucky Bar is more competent to administer a closing than an employee of a title company who has supervised closings for 20 years," says Tom Gordon, Senior Counsel of HALT, a legal reform organization.

The Kentucky ruling was in step with HALT's advocacy of a continuum of legal services to match the continuum of legal consumer needs. This not only connects consumers with the most qualified service provider, but it promotes an atmosphere of competition and consumer choice. The nonlawyer organizations called the KBA position an attempt to thwart such healthy competition in order to protect lawyers.

Filing an amicus curiae brief in support of the lay closing agents, the Department of Justice states, "[The KBA statute] likely will cause costs for all Kentucky consumers to rise while providing them no more protection than they currently receive. On the other hand, there is no demonstrated harm from the lay closings that have [already] taken place in Kentucky."

The Court's decision echoes legislation in Virginia and a Supreme Court of New Jersey decision that permit nonlawyer real estate closings. HALT has worked to abolish other unwarranted unauthorized practice of law statutes across the nation. Holding up the simple definition that the unauthorized practice of law means saying you are a lawyer when you are not, HALT views the recent Kentucky decision as an important step in the struggle against the bar's use of unauthorized practice statutes as mechanisms for stifling competition and pushing qualified service providers out of the marketplace.

Yesterday's news comes on the heels of HALT's testimony before an American Bar Association Task Force on the Model Definition of the Practice of Law. Opposition from HALT and other organizations forced the Task Force to back off from its original, overly broad proposed definition that stood to proscribe consumer access to diverse legal service providers.

Founded in 1978, HALT-An Organization of Americans for Legal Reform is a non-partisan, non-profit public interest organization. HALT pursues an ambitious education and advocacy program that challenges the legal establishment to improve access and reduce costs in the civil justice system. Please visit www.halt.org for more information.