Arrogant Attorney Asshats

Stoid, I’m not sure you realize that the term “legal advice” is itself a legal term of art that has been interpreted by courts, bar associations and other relevant authorities. In general, something becomes legal advice when it is given to an individual for her individual situation. Although a lawyer may write to educate the general public, whether via a website or otherwise, when the lawyer provides individual information to a person about her particular situation, it bears the significant risk that a court or ethics tribunal will consider that an attorney-client relationship has arisen and the lawyer could be liable for malpractice if the information is not actually relevant and complete.

Association of the Bar of the City of New York Formal Ethics Opinion 1998-2 discusses some of these issues:

As such, most lawyers are rightly gunshy about answering specific questions posed by an individual about their particular legal situations.

Although you might not consider something to be “advice”, the more specificly related to your particular situation the question is, the more likely the law of legal ethics is to consider any question and answer “advice”. Further, most lawyers are reluctant to take the risk of getting into the grey areas of whether or not something is or is not “advice” when dealing with particular situations. Even the question of whether a lawyer has encountered any cases with a particular bunny/pancake result could well be considered legal advice, whether or not you think it to be merely a request for non-advice “information.”