Colorado Supreme Court Takes Action To Authorize Independent Divorce Paraprofessionals

I was on a Colorado Bar Association committee that pushed this initiative, way too many years ago, and left it when it seemed like the bar association vetoed the idea. But the Colorado Supreme Court pushed forward and is making this happen. The statement below is from a press release from the Colorado Supreme Court:

Volunteer judges, attorneys, paralegals, family court facilitators, and other court staff have been busy developing an implementation plan to license legal paraprofessionals for certain types of domestic relations matters, pursuant to an order by the Colorado Supreme Court. The plan will address education and qualifications, licensure requirements, ethics rules, procedural rules, training and systems requirements. 

This project is described on a new webpage, which links to the Supreme Court’s authorization orders as well as the preliminary report sent to the Court from the Advisory Committee.

The project anticipates that licensing legal paraprofessionals for non-complex, lower-asset domestic relations cases may make legal services more widely available to the many litigants who otherwise would appear in family court without a lawyer. Specifically, the preliminary report – which formed the basis of the Court’s order to develop a follow-up implementation plan – provides that licensed legal paraprofessionals would be allowed to undertake certain matters where net marital assets are below a threshold amount, such as $200,000. The report provides that licensed legal paraprofessionals would be allowed to accompany their clients to court, and would be allowed to answer factual questions of the court but could not orally advocate for them. There would be a licensure exam and an ethics exam specific to this new group of licensed professionals.

The Colorado Supreme Court would need to approve a more detailed implementation plan and draft rules. The Advisory Committee anticipates that the Court will provide a public comment period and public hearing.

Please refer to the project webpage and report for more information. Questions can be directed to paraprofessionals@csc.state.co.us.