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From: clement@ucbiris.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: net.legal
Subject: Re: Illegal practice of law
Message-ID: <484@ucbjade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Thu, 27-Mar-86 14:58:13 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbjade.484
Posted: Thu Mar 27 14:58:13 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Mar-86 02:17:49 EST
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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Keywords: Ethics, Practice of Law.

I'm new to the net (because UCBerkeley just made it accessible to us regular
folks.), so please accept my appologies in advance if this has been discussed
previously.

I'm curious about the legality of the very informative discussions I've been
reading in net.legal.  In particular, when a non-lawyer gives
advice or information on the net,  does this constitute the unauthorized
practice of law?  

What about when a licenced attorney of one state offers advice which does not
purport to be specific to the state in which he is licenced?  Does the
gratuitous nature of such advice take it out of the purview of "unauthorized
practice of law" statutes?  How about the disciplinary rules of the State
Bar of states in which he is unlicenced?

The disemination of this advice might be viewed by some as dangerous because of
the potential for misleading lay persons about their local rights.

Personally, I'm not likely to rely too much on the network for legal advice,
but I'll bet there are a lot of programmers who read net.legal for advice on
how to protect their programs with copyright.

Net.legal seems to provide a valuable service to a lot of people as well
as a forum for discussion of a lot of interesting issues, but I feel uneasy
about the legality/ethics of it.  Am I being paronoid?

Tom Clement
Licenced to practice law in the state of Texas.
Bar #04361500