Like more and more new lawyers, Argyle and Spencer graduated into a demoralizing job market, especially for jobs in public-interest law. So they decided to start a small nonprofit firm of their own, with four full-time equivalents and two part-time volunteers, catering to local, middle-class clients in a creative way. Instead of providing representation for free and surviving on grants, they decided to charge for their services.

But instead of charging a flat fee, they index their hourly rates to each client’s income on a simple sliding scale that's published on their website. As their pricing table shows, a client's rate is determined only by family size and family income. At the low end, for example, a family of four earning $30,000 per year now pays $50 per hour for OLS’s services; at the high end, the rate for a family of four making $95,000 per year is $135. As OLS’s average hourly fee to date—$55—shows, their client base thus far has skewed toward the lower side of the matrix. (OLS will only take clients whose household income is between 1.25 and 4.25 times the poverty line. In Utah, half the state's population falls in that range.)

OLS is an intriguing response to two related problems: the feasibility of legal guidance for everyone but the rich, and the current glut of lawyers. That second problem should solve the first, but—for reasons I discussed recently in a longer piece—it hasn’t. In short, that's the case because expanding legal complexity and the bar’s “restrictive guild-like ownership structure of the business" have given American lawyers immense pricing leverage.

As a result, self-representation rates are high (in domestic violence cases, they often exceed 90 percent), while many Americans, as law professor Gillian Hadfield has illuminated, simply give up on claiming their legal rights because they can’t afford a champion. This is discouraging: “A growing body of research indicates that outcomes for unrepresented litigants are often less favorable than those for represented litigants,” notes one federal study.

Argyle, Spencer, and David McNeill—a recent Utah M.B.A. who oversees the firm’s business strategy—believe that OLS’s nonprofit status and its unusual pricing approach combine to make the firm a successful answer to those problems.

As a nonprofit, OLS is, of course, exempt from many taxes. Its lawyers also are eligible for the government’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which wipes out the balance of their federal student loans after 10 years of monthly payments—an important subsidy. “The check you get from Uncle Sam in ten years is well worth what you paid in a lower salary equivalent,” Argyle says.

OLS's nonprofit status also allows it to get referrals from a number of sources, including courts, other nonprofits, and the state Bar. And it encourages businesses to help them out: not only are they a good cause, but contributions are tax-deductible. A private investigator, Argyle mentioned, offers the firm heavily discounted rates; other supporters have upgraded OLS’s databases and worked on the firm’s website for free.