The concept of having a statewide legal lab to test new ways of providing legal services has been unanimously rejected by the Bar Board of Governors at its meeting on December 2.

The Supreme Court’s Special Committee to Improve the Delivery of Legal Services had conceptually approved the legal lab and recommended the court give the special committee an additional six months to flesh out how a lab would work, if the justices were amenable to the idea.

The board did approve some other recommendations from the special committee. It endorsed the idea of allowing legal aid organizations to organize under Bar rules as nonprofit corporations, and to have nonlawyer members on their boards of directors. But unlike the special committee, the board said neither idea needed to be tested in the legal lab.