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There is one restriction in particular which I believe has a huge effect on the legal industry's slow pace of change -- only lawyers may own companies which provide legal services to clients (vs. in-house counsel). So, want to start an online, virtual law firm? Either act as a referral service or make sure you never want a non-attorney to have equity in your company. Why does this rule exist? I haven't a clue.

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This is true for most state-licensed professionals like doctors and accountants. There are two main reasons for this.

The first is that a non-licensed person could easily bypass the license rules by affiliating with a licensed person in name only and doing all the work requiring a license.

The second is that licensed professionals have ethical and professional duties to their clients that they are taught as part of their licensing eductation. A non-licensed person may not know these duties, or be aware of their rationales, and may try to influence the licensed person to violate them.

I don't believe this is true for doctors, although, I could be wrong but I think HMO's get around the restriction. The bottom line is that lawyers are a protected guild with rules like the one mentioned above that artificially inflate the value of their services.

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