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Former ABA executive director joins Rocket…

Practice Technology Former ABA executive director joins Rocket Lawyer, hopes to expand access to justice

By Debra Cassens Weiss

September 14, 2023, 3:11 pm CDT

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Jack Rives served in the U.S. Air Force for 33 years before becoming the ABA’s executive director in 2010. Rives hopes to play a role in expanding access to justice in his new position at online legal services company Rocket Lawyer.

Former ABA Executive Director Jack Rives hopes to play a role in expanding access to justice in his new position at online legal services company Rocket Lawyer.

Rives will become president of the newly created unit Rocket Legal Professional Services, according to a Sept. 14 press release and stories by Reuters and LawSites.

Rives left the ABA at the end of February after more than 12 years with the association.

Rocket Lawyer offers online legal documents and on-call lawyers. The new unit will consolidate services needing human assistance, according to Reuters. Rives will seek to expand the number of lawyers delivering legal services through the online platform, according to LawSites. He will also aid the company in using artificial intelligence to boost lawyer productivity.

“Rocket Lawyer wants people to understand you do need a lawyer,” Rives told LawSites. “And we want to make them as accessible as possible. We want to make the process simple.”

Rocket Lawyer was one of the first entities to win approval for Utah’s regulatory sandbox program, which tests alternative approaches to providing legal services. Rives will oversee the Utah initiative and will seek approval in a similar Arizona program. He will also oversee an alternative business structure program in the United Kingdom.

Rives told LawSites that ethics rules governing law practice were written decades ago.

“If I’m going to help a client in Oregon, I need to be licensed in Oregon,” Rives said. “But we’re also going to be looking at other possibilities that may present themselves to further advance the law in this area.”

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