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Comment by devmunchies | Hacker News Reader

Off topic question... Is there a law about giving legal advice in a public forum if you're not a lawyer? Why do people add the disclaimer about not being a lawyer. Generally curious.

Moreover, is there a law about impersonating lawyer in a public forum (not that any ethical person would do that of course)?

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No there is not a law against giving legal advice if you're not a lawyer. It's lawyers who are sometimes prohibited from giving legal advice. Non-lawyers have the usual freedom of speech, restricted in the usual ways.

Claiming that you are someone you're not on the Internet is so commonplace it is hard to see where any trouble would come of it by itself. Again it's different if you knowingly cause harm to others.

I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Or maybe I am and it is. Who knows.

> No there is not a law against giving legal advice if you're not a lawyer.

In most (all, I think) US jurisdictions, providing legal advice is practice of law, and doing it without a license to do so in the state is prohibited (usually, a crime.)

This isn't not legal advice and I am not a lawyer. Consult an actual lawyer licensed in your state before deciding whether or not you should provide legal advice.

I think you are prohibited from giving legal advice for a fee not advice of a legal nature generally, telling a friend how to file in small claims court isn't prohibited for example.

In some states the collection of the fee is not relevant. All that is relevant in these states is that you do or do not have a alicense to practice and that you were conducting work that is typically conducted by an attorney and you are providing legal advice. In some states just the act of typing a Motion for someone who is representing themselves in open court is practicing law without a license unless you have passed your bar exam. You can get in trouble for drafting a Motion for your spouse and vice versa unless you are an attorney representing your spouse.

Legal advice should be limited to someone who is an attorney. There are ways around that giving of advice, you can say, "if air were in that position I would do xyz." Or "when that happened to me my attorney said I should xyz."

Practicing law without a license is a crime albeit one not often prosecuted unless you are representing yourself as an attorney and in most cases that involves the transfer of monies for those legal services but not always.

"This isn't not legal advice..."

Busted!

You sometimes see this as IAALBINYL (instead of the more common IANAL), standing for "I Am A Lawyer But I Am Not YOUR Lawyer"

Or, "free legal advice is worth what you paid for it."

It's worth noting, though, that many forms of actual "free" legal advice still come with serious professional obligations on the part of the lawyer. Pro-bono work, public defenders, contingency basis, etc are free to some extent, but nonetheless create a client relationship that is at least nominally as serious as one that is paid for.

There is a reason that lawyers online are very quick to point out that they are not opening up such a relationship.

Public defenders are most definitely not free (in the US anyway), you just don't have to pay up front and are guaranteed to you even if it's obvious you have no ability to repay.

My understanding is that lawyers are accountable to the legal advice they give.

So they give legal advice, then the person reads the advice, and acts on it. If it's wrong then they can sue.

IANAL

If you frequent online forums for hobbies that have lots of regulations, you'll run into this a lot.

It's mostly to remind people to not trust advice on the internet. While the person giving legal advice might be correct, they haven't read and understood the law with the legal background a lawyer has.

It likely is a result of "copy-catting" to some extent. For those that _are_ lawyers, giving legal advice without first clearly stating to the recipient that no implicit attorney-client relationship is being created can create just such a relationship (i.e., and therefore potentially subject the atty. to possible malpractice charges, etc.). So actual attorneys always preface any statements with the "not advice" comment. Because of that, some non-lawyers may have picked up upon the practice and started restating it as "I'm not a lawyer ..." from some belief that there is a legal requirement to do so.

Not a lawyer (ironically) but afaik there are all sorts of laws governing an attorney-client relationship, and it's possible to implicitly enter into such a relationship by giving something resembling legal advice.

Where I am (Ontario, Canada) I believe it is illegal to give legal advice if not a lawyer, and to impersonate a lawyer [0]. I'm not a lawyer and could be wrong of course... but the disclaimer costs me nothing and makes it moderately less likely to be illegal (and less likely to be prosecuted even if it is illegal)

[0] https://www.canlii.org/en/on/laws/stat/rso-1990-c-l8/latest/...

> Why do people add the disclaimer about not being a lawyer. Generally curious.

I've always taken it as "I want people to assume that I know what I'm talking about, unless there are negative consequences. I still want to chime in, though." That said, I'm not a sociologist, and you should procure advice from an expert before forming opinions about people on the internet you've never met.

"IANAL" is polite internet slang for "you can stop reading this comment, as I don't know wtf I'm talking about." Vaguely related to the old "PLONK".

It's a meme. People do it because they see other people doing it.

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