Lawyers cannot now be professionally supervised by non-lawyers. It is nonsense to say that an attorney's professional independence would per se be compromised because he or she in a business partnership with non-lawyers. If the consumer's basic right to choose among service providers continues to be limited as it is today, it is consumers who will suffer. I find it chilling that those who would retain the current restrictions do so in the name of consumer protection, when quite the opposite is the case. The right to be informed is often paired with the right to choose, so that together they result in consumer choice that is informed.
Informed choice is of course a legal concept with legal meaning and consequences.
But it is also used in its lay sense to measure whether a particular policy is pro-consumer. If the Model Rules are changed to do away with the current restrictions against multidisciplinary practices, informed choice will not be harmed in any way. No consumer or consumer advocate is likely to oppose any truthful disclosure. I submit that there are no special issues surrounding consumers' right to be informed that are posed merely by the shape of the economic entity where the attorney practices law. As stated in that discussion, disclosure is often the only remedy needed to deal with conflicts of interest.