Or…must someone be admitted to their local bar association before they can charge for legal services they provide?
They must have a practising license in their jurisdiction before they hold themselves out as an attorney and charge for attorney services they provide. I don’t know of anywhere where that is not the case.
I’ve seen one get a sharp reprimand and threat of legal action from a judge for even the suspicion of helping someone prepare their case.
On the other hand though, a law stuident can be paid a salary for (legalish/paralegal) services they perform for another company, so long as they don’t profess to be qualified/licensed lawyers.
The reason I ask…I am at my local Starbucks and a guy who is a wannabe lawyer (hasnt been to law school or passed the bar) said that law students can charge for some legal services. I have not heard of this (in California).
As I understand the above, a law student can basically work under the supervision of a licensed lawyer but cant offer services on their own.
I think that is correct. In some circumstances they can also do unpaid volunteer work, for example like I did in my final year of law school, working at legal aid.
California seems to have an official procedure for becoming a Certified Student, which allows a law student to work under the supervision of a practicing attorney.
Here’s the California Rules of Court on the issue. The certification comes from the State Bar of California, and their rules for the Practical Training of Law students can be found here.
According to the Court Rules, a Certified Student can do the following:
Nothing in there about whether the law student can be paid for this work, but the absence of any explicit prohibition would, i assume, mean that it’s probably OK for the supervising attorney to pay the student for the work performed. The nature of legal practice probably means that the client would pay the supervising attorney or the firm for services rendered. Because the student has to work under supervision, the rules would seem to preclude the student from taking any payment for legal services directly from a client.
The answer is for once, not jurisdiction dependent. The California rules basically state what is the practice everywhere. A Law Student is not only not permitted to give legal advice for consideration, this can also lead to action in many places; since a Law Student will be more believable to the average individual.
Law Students can (and regularly do) give legal advice under supervision of a qualified practitioner (either their Law Professor, or another qualified lawyer). When that is done, the law student is operating under the supervision of (and under the insurance of) the supervisor. Not just any lawyer can permit this however, many jurisdictions have rules as to who can and the qualifications needed (in mine you have to be 7 years call and take out special insurance). Moreover, usually there is a prohibition against receiving of monies directly, usually the supervising lawyer will give the student a small sum (called a “stipend”, “allowance” “honourarium” or whatnot).
This BTW does not include people undergoing professional training, pupilage or articles. under a lawyer, they are typically graduates already and there the work is part of training.
I received assistance from 2 law students when I faced foreclosure.
But there were some pretty strong restrictions. First, I had to sign a contract stating that I understood they were students acting under the supervision of a licensed attorney, and their advice could not be construed as “legal advice”.
2nd, they actually WERE under the close supervision of one of their professors, who sat in every meeting and interrupted with corrections or suggestions. For them the whole experience was a teaching exercise. It was annoying at times but it worked and they helped me save my home.
One other thing – none of them appeared in court with me or took any part in communications with the court or the other party. They simply helped me prepare for those occasions.
Overall the CA restrictions on certified law students sound very similar to the restrictions on paralegals.
Broadly speaking they can do many lawyer-like activities, as long as there’s a real licensed lawyer supervising them adequately. Where the required closeness of supervision is tied to the specifics of the work being done. Sometimes it’s monitoring face to face interactions, other times it’s just reviewing written work before it’s released to the client.
Even helping a friend for free can be an issue, I imagine. the problem is that a law student may be seen as knowing something when there is no guarantee their advice is any better than the internet (probably is, but you never know). This could mislead a client into not getting the correct advice and screwing up their case (or failing to bring up some important point). If they shouldn’t do it for free, thy sure as heck shouldn’t do it for pay. So previous posts are very import - you don’t want any half-a-lawyer types practicing except under the supervision of a real lawyer.
After all, if your friend, the mechanic in training, monkeys with your car, all he’s likely to do worst case is void the warranty and cost you a car. Court cases can have much deeper repercussions.