Happy Friday! With the arrival of the end of the work week comes this week’s installment of Fall Through the Cracks Friday – everyone’s favorite non-insurance related insurance blog feature.

This week we turn to our friends at Freakonomics blog for an interesting look at a new requirement in New York state that mandates a minimum of 50 hours of donated legal service time prior to becoming a licensed attorney in the state.

Certainly the intent behind this new requirement is good, though it does raise interesting issues around a flood of inexperienced attorneys providing potentially questionable legal advice. From the article:

The approximately 10,000 lawyers who apply to the New York State Bar each year will have to demonstrate that they have performed 50 hours of pro bono work to be admitted, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman said. He said the move was intended to provide about a half-million hours of badly needed legal services to those with urgent problems, like foreclosure and domestic violence.

 

The bloggers at Freakonomics raise a few other interesting questions around potential expansion to other licensed professionals – check it out here.

Enjoy the weekend! It is (finally) sunny in Minneapolis so it should be a nice weekend here.