You’re gonna have to serve somebody.
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Bob Dylan: Gotta Serve Somebody
State Bar Associations need to decide who they serve and then develop regulations that actually serve that group. Too frequently, Bar Association try to serve their lawyer members and give lip service to the public interest in access to justice.
I learned a new term this week courtesy of Leo LaPorte, aka the TechGuy. LaPorte hosts weekly radio shows on Saturdays and Sundays and then pushes the shows out to his podcasts. I like to listen to his shows since they are full of tech news and developments unfiltered through the lens of legal tech.
On last Saturday’s show, LaPorte called attention to the Facebook ads that appeared with various weekend football games. The gist of the ads, which featured Mark Zuckerberg as a spokesperson, is that regulation is good and there needs to be more of it.
When I first saw the ads, I frankly didn’t pay much attention. I thought maybe I misheard: why would Zuck want more regulation? I really didn’t give it much thought since I was more interested in watching football and eating turkey (not necessarily in that order!).
Regulatory capture occurs when a public authority charged with regulating an industry in the public interest comes to identify the public interest with the interests of producers in the industry, rather than the i the general public
But LaPorte clarified that what Zuck really was lobbying for was more regulation that helps Facebook (excuse me, Meta) and puts up barriers to competitors like TikTok, etc. There’s actually a term for this: regulatory capture. According to Oxford, regulatory capture occurs “when
