So sue me 
I can’t be bothered to go through the other thread again, but I think all he does is review the documents she is going to submit and make sure that whatever motions, etc., that Stoid has come up with are in correct format. You know, the name of the court typed in the right place, that sort of thing.
How you arrive at that just boggles my mind completely.
Advice is suggesting a course of action. Telling me that you have, in fact heard of bunnies with pancakes on their heads tells me absolutely nothing whatsoever about what course of action you believe I should take, about what you think is the best course of action, about what you believe will be the outcome of the action…etc. Nothing. So how can you possibly see it as advice? It would be the crappiest advice I ever got in my life, since it isn’t advice!
You, and anyone else who has concluded that telling me anything at all that I will consider one way or another as part of my decision making process is the same thing as advice must not find yourselves getting asked your advice very often:
“Ms. Whatsit, which job offer should I accept, Company A or B?”
“Well, Company A specializes in widgets. Company B makes widgets and wodgets. Company A is a half mile to the east, and Company B is a half mile to the west. So…that’s my advice.”
Of course, maybe the fact that one is east and the other west will actually influence my decision, but since you don’t know me, you have no way on earth of knowing in what way it will influence my decision or why, or the outcome, you have not advised me. You have given me information that will be useful in my decision-making process. Completely different things.
Are you being serious? Because that would be a troubling revelation.
And you are mistaken. That stuff is easy…If I still needed someone to double check that, I surely would be in deep shit after this much time and work.
Stoid, the thing you seem to be missing is that providing “case law, statutes, [a lawyer’s] own observation” is defined in the legal profession as giving advice.
Although you may consider it, under a lay person’s definition, to be mere “information”, to a lawyer giving case or statutory citations and providing legal observations is part and parcel of the practice of law and considered giving legal advice, particularly when it is directed toward an individual (or organization) which has a specific legal problem.
IANAL but this is my impression: It’s advice because there will be no case exactly like yours–no brown bunnies with pancakes on their heads. There may be cases of brown hares with tortillas, or black bunnies with muffins, or brown bunnies with pancakes but ALSO with bacon or brown kittens with french toast. Whether those are substantially the same thing will determine what you do next–most especially if they don’t mention the case of the brown-spotted bunny with the doughnut that you find out about later and decide they should have mentioned it and they mislead you/lied to you when they didn’t mention it.
Information from anyone on any matter of any complexity at all is inherently biased towards whatever course the speaker either assumes or explicitly prefers the listener follow, and so is advice.
This is where your major disconnect is. In legal terms, any discussion that relates to your case - precedent or case law, for example - is “legal advice.” Note the distinction between between “legal advice” and the way you’re using the word “advice” on its own. The attorneys are using it as a term of art and you’re using it as a descriptor.
If you’re sitting around the kitchen table bullshitting, “advice” is a perfectly valid descriptor. But you’re in litigation, so it’s a term of art. There’s no other way to approach it.
When not capitalized, “aborigine” is a generic word that refers to any indigenous group.
“things to research” is rather loose, and not what I’ve sought. I’ve been very specific. Plaintiff-pancake-bunny-head-order…ever heard of it? Cuz if you have not, then maybe my inability to find any such reference means it doesn’t exist. Deciding how many lawyers not hearing of it means I give up my search is a tougher call than the reverse, which would be even one single lawyer saying yes, they have heard of it. Then I know I need to keep looking because it’s probably there to be found. (Which is one of the amazing things about the law… how so many things have happened and ended up in appeals at least once. It’s generally tough to find a case that is truly unique. I’m always tickled and amazed to find that yes, exactly that detail actually came up before! Whoda thunk!)
Without checking your link yet, I’m going to predict that all the rulings that resulted in actual malpractice or ethics violations involve actual clients and lawyers working on actual cases. I predict not a single one will involve a specific question from a non-client of a lawyer that was answered with purely factual information and constituted the entirety of their interaction. I am prepared to be wrong, the world is a wacky place, which is why I’m going to look. But I really don’t think so. (And lawyer fears, while understandable, are excessive. At least in California, legal malpractice is a very high bar to clear, starting with the requirement that the client show that the case would have gone differently absent the lawyer’s “malpractice”. Good luck with that if you haven’t won your appeal already.)
Not to mention that obviously what she really wants is someone to do her legal work for her, for free. She won’t hire someone to do a search for relevant authorities – she just wants them to tell her if they’ve ever “heard of” cases that might be helpful. At no charge, of course.
OR maybe it means the lawyer didn’t know about a very key decision that actually resolves your entire case in your favor. And so the day after you lose your case because you didn’t know about that case and relied on his assurance it wasn’t out there – you file a bar complaint against him. What problem could the lawyer possibly have with that?
They do not want you relying on their opinions of whether relevant caselaw exists. “Relevant” is in the eye of the beholder, requires legal judgement to evaluate, and therefore it can be – surprise! – legal advice to even say, yes, there are cases on that point or no, there aren’t.
Not to mention, for the upteenth time, that THESE LAWYERS DON’T OWE YOU ANY ANSWER AT ALL. They don’t owe you jack. They would have their billable ten minutes back – and you’d apparently feel they dealt with you more fairly – if they just slammed down the phone when they heard your voice.
There isn’t a a single person here who agrees that you’re entitled to what you apparently feel you are, or that you’ve interpreted this situation correctly. If at the end of the day you don’t win your case, I’m sure it will be the Evil Lawyers fault in your mind, but for myself I’ll be pretty confident that a bad outcome is due to the fact that if you don’t like what you’re hearing, you never fucking listen. You are never wrong in your own eyes, and you never listen. Not fucking ever.
And ANOTHER thing:
Now you want to engage in some big protracted argument about whether or not you’re actually asking for legal advice – of course you’re not, you assert, despite being told repeatedly by actual, real-life, flesh-and-blood lawyers that, yes, it sounds like you are. You insist you are not, because you are of course never wrong about anything ever, also smarter than everyone else, and completely fascinated by the law.
But whether what you are asking for really is or is not legal advice is a tangent that distracts from what you have been told repeatedly, which is that the people you are talking to probably think it is. So of course they’re not going to talk to you, they think they’re hanging their asses out in an ethical wind – at no charge – by doing so.
And you are not in a position to inform them that they are wrong, that they don’t know what they’re talking about when they decide for themselves whether they can or should assist you. If you don’t even trust them far enough to admit they would correctly evaluate what is or is not legal advice or practice, why the fuck would you think any of them were competent enough to point you in the direction you think you need to go with regard to precedent?
Either they’re medacious idiots, or they’re not. If they are not inveterate liars and have a brain in their head, such that you would trust their assistance, then you should trust as well their assertion that they cannot talk to you because you are asking for legal advice.
The creepy part about this whole thing for me is that my old man acted exactly the same way. Other points of view simply did not exist for him, and he would look at you and nod as you tried to steer him away from the next biggest disaster he was headed for as politely as you knew how, and he’d just turn around and act like you didn’t say anything. Or sometimes if he was in a particularly crazy mood, he’d just laugh at you like you were an idiot. How could you understand better than he could? He was just smarter than everyone else by default, and no one could tell him anything, because he Didn’t. Fucking. Listen . . . EVER.
Our family had a no-expenses-paid tour of many of the lousier farm towns and coal cracking towns of rural PA, because of this fuckwit and his sole talent in life which consisted of getting fired from every job he ever held, and it didn’t end until my mom finally wised up and dumped his sorry ass. That was a long time ago, and I don’t know where he is, and I don’t want to, and Stoid, if you don’t want to wind up the same way in life, WISE. THE FUCK. UP!!
Actually, there are two problems with this. The first is that, although whether a lawyer might be found liable in malpractice or an ethics violation is a consideration, not getting yourself into a situation where you might have to defend yourself is a very important consideration, even if you would ultimately prevail, particularly when you’re doing legal work without getting paid.
More important, lawyers don’t want to give out half-assed, unreasearched legal advice, even if it is only “have you heard of this”, because they’re likely to be wrong, or at least doing a disservice to the the person they’re they giving the advice to. Lawyers all know that it is very frequently improper to merely answer a client’s (and here I’m talking about a paying client in a formal retention) question without understanding the background of the question and additional facts which the client might not even realize are important. There’s little more terrifying to a lawyer than a client with an overly specific question, because it’s usually a pretty good bet that the question is based on some risky and wrong assumptions. If a lawyer is unwilling to answer a specific question from a paying client without doing the necessary background investigation and legal research, it is no surprise that they won’t give offhand answers to questions from non-clients.
To my mind (and disputing Jodi just a bit), the least important reason is not being paid for the few minutes of time. I, for one, am quite glad to give people I know short explanations and answers to legal questions where I am qualified to give proper answers. It builds goodwill for the legal profession and for lawyers individually. For instance, in the thread that spawned this one, I gave Stoid a somewhat lengthy explanation of how I thought appellate briefs should be organized (or at least how I do it). However, what is doing a gross disservice is answering questions or giving legal advice (as defined in the legal way) in an incomplete manner or which might not apply to the situation at hand.
In other words, I’m happy to give a limited amount of advice for free, I just don’t want to give bad advice.
There is advice, and then there is legal advice.
At least twenty lawyers have now told you that answering your questions would constitute legal advice. I have yet to see one dissenting opinion.
Even the ones who did actually volunteer “information” (such as Gfactor and Rand Rover)gave you extremely general advice which would not be out of place in just about any legal thread.
You may wish to consider the possibility that your assumptions are wrong and that all the people who (1) went to law school, and (2) have practiced law are telling you the truth.
I still am genuinely curious about these payments Stoid is making to lawyers. Would you enlighten me?
She gave a family friend who apparently kinda sorta specializes in either divorce law or real estate law $2000 to be available on a PRN basis.
I never said, and do not believe, that the most important reason to give or not give advice, is whether you get paid for it. But since in many cases malpractice insurance does not cover non-clients, it is wise for an attorney to have a formalized relationship with an actual client before practicing law on that person’s behalf.
It’s much easier to join in a pile-on than to admit ignorance of someone else’s mind and motives.
All of us are ignorant about some things. You are right about there being no shame to it.