Reddit, I'd like to revisit the idea of /r/AskALawyer
I know this was brought up a while ago, and received a fair bit of attention from several sides of the debate. Those in favor thought, as I do, that there could be a lot to be gained by having a base of people with legal knowledge to ask questions of, while those opposed largely were of the opinion that it would be both risky and, for lack of a better term, insulting to expect lawyers to give legal advice without pay, contract, or expectation of privacy.
I think, though, that there could be a subreddit where people with legal knowledge could answer general questions about the way the law works, how things tend to be interpreted, etc, without crossing into the realm of "legal advice." I would imagine it would be an explicit rule of the subreddit that specific questions asking for legal advice would not be permitted.
Given a subreddit like this, one could ask about things relating to being a lawyer (what's the process like for law school, the bar, etc), about how laws are traditionally interpreted (I've heard you don't technically need to obey a stop sign in a mall parking lot, for example), things like that.
r/legal currently exists, but seems to be a) poorly attended, and b) mostly borderline legal advice. Would there be support for r/AskALawyer if it existed, and are there qualified people who would be willing to answer questions there?
Posted Mar 24, 2012, 11:46 PM UTC