North Dakota Supreme Court Justice Jerod Tufte asks a question during oral arguments on Dec. 18, 2023. (Photo by Kyle Martin/For the North Dakota Monitor)
FARGO (KFGO) – North Dakota Supreme Court Justice Jerod Tufte is proposing non-traditional licensing models, including legal paraprofessionals, to help address a growing attorney shortage across the state as he campaigns for a second 10-year term on the high court.
Speaking on “Afternoons Live with Tyler Axness,” Tufte, who chairs a state task force on lawyer licensing, compared the proposed legal framework to the healthcare industry. Just as nurse practitioners or physician assistants manage routine medical needs, trained legal paraprofessionals could assist residents with straightforward matters like evictions or basic civil filings.
“We have a lawyer shortage in the state,” Tufte said, noting that many rural North Dakotans struggle to find or afford legal representation. “Not every eviction is simple, but a lot of them are. If you can have that triage personnel, like in the medical profession, somebody who knows enough to know, ‘Is this a complicated case that needs the top-level skill of a lawyer?’ I think law can learn something from that.”
First elected in 2016, Tufte pointed to his decade-long record, which includes participating in nearly 2,400 decisions and authoring roughly 400 opinions. Beyond licensing reform, he emphasized the need for experienced leadership to guide the judicial system through rapid technological changes and maintaining a judicial philosophy rooted in interpreting laws according to their plain text.
“The job for the court is not to fill in the gaps of the policy aims of the legislature,” Tufte said. “Our job is to take the legislative compromise, give it its plain and ordinary meaning so that the people who are obligated to follow that law… have fair notice.”
The state Supreme Court is currently awaiting a committee report on licensing recommendations before working with state lawmakers to secure funding and statutory changes.
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