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services.  They are no more effective than the free market

at deterring and filtering out incompetent practitioners,

yet they raise the cost of legal services, thereby pricing

many people out of the market.  They also infringe upon the

rights of individuals to pursue their chosen occupation and

restrict the freedom of consumers to seek the best service

at the lowest cost.  For those reasons, states ought to

repeal their UPL statutes.  Where the UPL prohibition is

judicially created, the legislature ought to overturn it

with an anti-UPL statute, establishing that it is permis-

sible for anyone to assist another person in any legal

matter.

The ABA, aware that legal services are priced out of

the reach of many people, has recommended expanding the role

of nonlawyers, especially in state administrative agency

proceedings.94  The ABA suggests that, in such proceedings,

states "may wish to reassess their current UPL laws, rules

and enforcement activities."95  In other areas, however, the

ABA has opposed allowing people to choose nonlawyer repre-

sentatives, supposedly fearing harm to consumers from ill-

trained practitioners.  But the ABA undercuts its own posi-

tion with its analysis of the market for tax preparation

services, an activity that is certainly at the periphery of

the practice of law.  After observing that individuals can

choose tax preparers ranging from storefront operations that

flourish each spring to nationally known services to accoun-

tants to tax lawyers, the ABA concludes, "This array of

choices responds to a broad range of public demand for

assistance.  It may be a useful model of how the legal

profession, together with non-lawyers, can offer the public

the kinds of affordable, appropriate and reasonably safe

help for law-related matters that the public seeks in many

areas."96

Exactly so.  Fortunately, tax preparation has never

been deemed the practice of law, so the market operates

freely, giving taxpayers a wide range of service providers

to choose from.  People with simple tax returns can patron-

ize low-cost services; those with difficult tax problems

almost invariably go to accountants or lawyers who special-

ize in tax work.  There are no government-imposed barriers

to entry into the tax preparation market, which therefore

sets its own standards for competence.  Not every tax return

is done perfectly--experts and nonexperts alike make mis-

takes--but the unlicensed, unregulated tax preparation

market maximizes consumer value.  It is, indeed, a useful

model and argues strongly in favor of the elimination of UPL

prohibitions so that consumers of legal services can simi-