10 years, UPL will be a dead letter'.

Ft. Lauderdale attorney Adele Stone mused on the irony of grumblings about there being too many lawyers, while most of the legal needs of the poor and middle class go unmet. Board of Governors member Lanse Scriven talked about 14 states that now use a common bar exam, and a person passing the exam can get a license in any of those states. And in Toronto, he said, Walmart is offering legal services.

Consultant Gerry Riskin predicted that in 10 years there will be no such thing as the unlicensed practice of law.

Technology, said board member John Stewart, will both challenge lawyers and law firms, and also allow them to reach clients they currently don't serve.

Those were some of the bits and pieces that emerged when the Board of Governors spent an afternoon reviewing the ongoing Vision 2016 study. The board devoted part of its July 25 meeting to getting information provided to the Vision 2016 commission and reports of its four panels, which deal with technology, legal education, bar admissions, and access to services.

Gerry Riskin, who with partner Jordon Furlong, has been advising the Vision 2016 commission, went over the challenges to the legal profession, which have been presented and studied at earlier commission meetings and at a seminar at the Bar's June Annual Convention.

These findings included such information that while new law school graduates are having trouble finding work, only 15 percent of all legal needs of people and businesses are being met, primarily, Riskin said, because lawyers cannot economically serve the other 85 percent.

Technology is transforming the profession, with huge investments by venture capitalists ($458 million in 2013) both in technologies to help law firms, but also to allow people to handle their own legal needs. Online legal services and even apps for handheld devices are proliferating, as is competition from nonlawyers.

"In 10 years, UPL will be a dead letter," Riskin predicted.

Presently, there is experimentation with "predictive coding" for computer software to resolve disputes, he said.

Australia and Europe allow non-lawyers to own law firms and permit public stock offerings in legal firms. States are exploring combining their bar exams so that one test allows admissions in multiple states. These examples reflect the growing regional and national scope of many law firms and the legal practice.

"Your job is to create the future, which I think is extremely exciting and requires a lot of courage,"...