When the Utah Supreme Court gave its approval to implement a two-year pilot “regulatory sandbox” program on Aug. 14, which allows applicants to seek approval to experiment with new legal business models and approaches, many proponents of lawyer regulatory reform breathed a sigh of relief.

“If they had not passed it, it would have caused us to think, ‘Wow, what happened there,’” said Arizona Supreme Court Vice Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer, who chairs Arizona’s Delivery of Legal Services Task Force that seeks to allow nonlawyers to provide some lawyer services. “But the fact that they did pass it, it simply confirmed what we already knew.”