Source
r/Ask_Lawyers•
aronkovacs

Is refraining legal advice based on legality or business?

I see that lawyers refrain from giving legal advice, in this sub they're forbidden. I'm not trying to be rude or anything, I see doctor's refrain from giving specific medical advice out of their scope of practice (understandable as they want no harm). I'm curious if it is motivated by legality (or legal responsibility) or just simply business (they want to charge for it? My co-workers son is a lawyer working for a firm, his firm forbids him from giving legal advice. Is there a regulation throughout lawyers (like a code of conduct or something similar) that forbids advice?

Posted Dec 1, 2019, 6:34 AM UTC

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adamatorNY/CA Business Law•

Giving legal advice can inadvertently create an attorney client relationship. Once a client relationship exists, the attorney can not stop halfway or give incomplete advice —the attorney must represent the client zealously until the matter is fully resolved, or formally withdraw. The last thing any attorney wants is to unintentionally create that client relationship. Doing so can generate liability for the attorney (such as a malpractice claim) or even risk the attorney’s law license (such as due to violations of the rules of professional responsibility, for example some jurisdictions have a rule requiring the engagement of an attorney to be done through a written agreement).

Also most situations requiring legal advice are so fact sensitive that it would be almost impossible to give adequate guidance based on a rough question—a lot of follow up and questions are required in most cases to form a full picture.

Also in order to get enough facts to do a proper analysis, the person receiving advice would be divulging a lot of information that could/should be subject to attorney client privilege and confidentiality. Discussing over the internet in a public forum would seriously harm their legal interests because the information will lose its privilege and could be used against them.

Also most situations requiring legal advice actually need a lot more than advice, and it would be very dangerous for most lay people to take some helpful suggestions and analysis and then try to play lawyer for themselves—they are very unlikely to cover all the nuance, and will certainly miss technical issues. Attorneys don’t want to mislead anyone into thinking they can represent themselves after a helpful attorney provides a simple explanations of the major issues. I think this risk is actually higher for lawyers than for doctors: no doctor would imagine someone might try to perform surgery on themselves after hearing how a surgery should work, but people can and do try to represent themselves when what they really need is competent counsel.

I’m sure there are other reasons, but these spring to mind

Tl;dr it creates liability for the attorney and can seriously harm the interests of the person asking for advice.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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adamatorNY/CA Business Law•

Yep those too. This is starting to feel like an issue spotting exercise from an ethics exam—wonder how many more we can come up with :)

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jmsutton3Indiana - General Practice•

The owner/moderator of this sub argues that it is impossible to ethically give legal advice anonymously over the internet. I think some of us may disagree with that assessment, but it's not an unreasonable assessment and he's in charge so that's how it works.

It is not a universally accepted ethical rule, for example my state bar association actually has an internet forum set up specifically to receive legal advice from licensed attorneys in our state. But lawyers as a general rule are risk-averse and conservative in terms of boundary cases around the rules.

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jlatelyLouisiana •

My state also has such a forum, but users have to explicitly agree that there is not an attorney-client relationship created, and attorneys are covered because the state bar runs the forum. Neither of those things are true or possible here. Even so, there are very few attorneys willing to participate in the state bar forum in part because it's so hard to get the real facts from an anonymous person on the internet. At least if a client lies to me I have the chance to chew them out later (and charge them more money for creating more work for me).

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seditious3NY - Criminal Defense•

Another point re: doctors giving advice is that the human body is the same everywhere. The law is different everywhere.

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alfonso_xHigher Ed/Criminal•

I’d actually argue the opposite. When I go in for a checkup, they ask me literally over 100 questions about my and my family’s medical history. Genetic and environmental diversity are such that no two human bodies are the same.

As for the law, once you know the jurisdiction, you know the law applies the same to everyone in that jurisdiction.

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adamatorNY/CA Business Law•

Yeah agreed. I do notice that online medical resources have disclaimers along the lines that “this is for informational purposes only and not meant to diagnose or treat any medical condition.”

Not really so different from the “this is not legal advice” disclaimer that you’ll find on any online legal resources. I think part of the reason for the rule on this sub is that for that to be true, it’s necessary to actually avoid giving legal advice, and anything responsive to a specific factual question would risk contravening that

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Different_TailorNY - Criminal Law•

If you form an attorney-client relationship you are on the hook for malpractice.

I don’t think the rule is necessary here. I think the idea that someone is going to honestly believe that their lawyer is a an anonymous reddit user is somewhere between silly and absurd.

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