The Law For Lawyers Today has a short post on a few of the top stories to watch out for in 2018 and a couple of them are things I have been commenting about for a while: the issues related to participating in services like Avvo Legal Services and whether states will adopt Model Rule 8.4(g). On this last topic, I posted recently here and here.
Another important story relates to the claim that an online service that claims to help people resolve claims related to driving tickets is engaged in the unauthorized practice of law in Florida. This, I think, will be a big story this year because it may have significant implications on the notion of what constitutes the practice of law, and the authority of a state to regulate that practice. Bloomberg has a very good summary of the issues related to that story here.
I was a state ethics chair for 14 years and a state UP chair for 9. I though both efforts gave me some reds as a tenured teacher - you know, "I'm not totally a pointy -headed intellectual." But I was never totally comfortable with UP. This was usually about some little old lady filing out forms for money, and everybody wanted her to stop. A prosecutor could go after her for a fine (equal to bar dues) and get an injunction, but this was a good way to get unelected. So people came to the UP Chair to get an opinion to the effect of "stop that," which I did not like to do since that made me the bad guy. Might I be sued, and then thrown under the bus by the lawyers? Funny, sort of. When lawyers asked for an opinion dictating that all persons involved in a real estate transaction(even a consumer home buying deal) had to have a lawyer I decided this was too much. This was lawyer protection and not consumer protection. I guess I am weak and unworthy.
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