7 ms·

This is a little off topic but these comments make me wonder: why are lawyers so reluctant to give informal advice? I really appreciate the two thoughtful and

by lukas 10y ago

This is a little off topic but these comments make me wonder: why are lawyers so reluctant to give informal advice? I really appreciate the two thoughtful and informed comments at the top of this article here - why the disclaimers? I look for and give informal advice about all kinds of other topics that have the same levels of ambiguity and sometimes the same levels of importance as legal issues but it's always a real challenge to get a lawyer to weigh in informally on a legal issue. If someone asks me my opinion about an engineering or management issue they're facing, I'll give it to them knowing that I don't know the complete set of facts and they should take my opinion with a grain of salt. I might be missing important context and I might just be wrong. If I ask someone else advice on any topic, I assume that there is an implicit disclaimer. Is there something fundamentally different about the law? Is it because lawyers are in the business of giving advice? Anyway, appreciate you guys weighing in and hope you do it more frequently :).

xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
Typically, as licensed members of a regulated profession they could be held liable for any advice they provide.
teraflop 10y ago
There are strong legal protections for the attorney-client relationship, such that lawyers are obligated to act scrupulously in their clients' interests. These rules exist for good reason, but a prudent lawyer will want to make it very clear when such a relationship exists and when it doesn't.
- derefr 10y ago
  But why then, say "this is not legal advice" when you could instead say "I am a lawyer but I'm not your lawyer"? Or how about "I'm not formally signing off on this statement as a product of my legal-professional persona, but you're free to take what I just wrote to another lawyer and get them to vouch for its veracity, which they probably will"? I hear that in military and political contexts all the time—"I can tell you this as a friend, but not in my role as X, so go find some other X who's allowed to speak on it if you need formalization"—but I never hear it from lawyers. It always seems to be phrased more as "what I'm about to write is probably wrong and you should go to get your own lawyer who will tell you something entirely different."
  - libertymcateer 10y ago
    > "I am a lawyer but I'm not your lawyer" I say that all the time. I am sure it is in my comment history. E.g: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/464j0r/im_freelance_in_new_york_city_and_i_need_to/d03cu2z/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/464j0r/im_fre... https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45rwt8/do_i_need_bank_accounts_and_a_registered_business/d00cjut/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45rwt8/do_i_n... https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45alb6/we_are_five_best_friends_who_dropped_out_of/czwir2g/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45alb6/we_are...
libertymcateer 10y ago
> This is a little off topic but these comments make me wonder: why are lawyers so reluctant to give informal advice? Because an attorney-client relationship is created when the client reasonably believes it to have been created. As a result, you have to be really fucking clear that people are not your clients because, when making the determination of whether someone has reasonably determined that someone is their lawyer, courts look to what the average bloke would think - i.e., a total dumdum. So you really have to hit people over the head with the fact that no, you are not their lawyer. So, the second part of this is that when an attorney-client relationship is created, the attorney has a tremendous amount of duty to the client, and, if the client acts on the advice of the attorney and gets results they do not like, they can sue the attorney for malpractice. > If someone asks me my opinion about an engineering or management issue they're facing, I'll give it to them knowing that I don't know the complete set of facts and they should take my opinion with a grain of salt. Are you a licensed Professional Engineer? If so, for the love of Odin's beard, stop giving informal advice, as you are exposing yourself to professional liability. Licensed professions - accounting, medicine, law, professional engineering - have extremely high duties of care to their clients. They are exposed to malpractice liability when things go wrong. They have ethical obligations. It can be extremely hard to fire delinquent or terrible clients. To put it a completely different way: lawyers give advice as their job. There is no such thing as "informal advice" from a lawyer, the same where there is no such thing as a "pick up game" with an NBA player. It is their primary occupation. I don't do it for free - I charge a pretty stiff hourly rate. And every time I take on a client, it has impacts on my firm's malpractice insurance. In fact, I cannot take on clients without the explicit approval of the managing partner at my law firm - I get his written approval for every single one. To make it clear, the managing partner is the guy who, if there was a war between all the lawyers, gets to wear the biggest, fanciest hat. So, no, I am not just going to do the thing I do for my day job as a favor to someone else, any more than your computer programmer friend wants to fix your iphone. Does that go some distance to answering your question?
- polemic 10y ago
  So... :IANYL: _I am not your laywer_
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

by lukas 10y ago

xyzzy_plugh 10y ago

Typically, as licensed members of a regulated profession they could be held liable for any advice they provide.

teraflop 10y ago

There are strong legal protections for the attorney-client relationship, such that lawyers are obligated to act scrupulously in their clients' interests. These rules exist for good reason, but a prudent lawyer will want to make it very clear when such a relationship exists and when it doesn't.

derefr 10y ago
But why then, say "this is not legal advice" when you could instead say "I am a lawyer but I'm not your lawyer"? Or how about "I'm not formally signing off on this statement as a product of my legal-professional persona, but you're free to take what I just wrote to another lawyer and get them to vouch for its veracity, which they probably will"? I hear that in military and political contexts all the time—"I can tell you this as a friend, but not in my role as X, so go find some other X who's allowed to speak on it if you need formalization"—but I never hear it from lawyers. It always seems to be phrased more as "what I'm about to write is probably wrong and you should go to get your own lawyer who will tell you something entirely different."
- libertymcateer 10y ago
  > "I am a lawyer but I'm not your lawyer" I say that all the time. I am sure it is in my comment history. E.g: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/464j0r/im_freelance_in_new_york_city_and_i_need_to/d03cu2z/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/464j0r/im_fre... https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45rwt8/do_i_need_bank_accounts_and_a_registered_business/d00cjut/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45rwt8/do_i_n... https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45alb6/we_are_five_best_friends_who_dropped_out_of/czwir2g/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/45alb6/we_are...

libertymcateer 10y ago

> This is a little off topic but these comments make me wonder: why are lawyers so reluctant to give informal advice? Because an attorney-client relationship is created when the client reasonably believes it to have been created. As a result, you have to be really fucking clear that people are not your clients because, when making the determination of whether someone has reasonably determined that someone is their lawyer, courts look to what the average bloke would think - i.e., a total dumdum. So you really have to hit people over the head with the fact that no, you are not their lawyer. So, the second part of this is that when an attorney-client relationship is created, the attorney has a tremendous amount of duty to the client, and, if the client acts on the advice of the attorney and gets results they do not like, they can sue the attorney for malpractice. > If someone asks me my opinion about an engineering or management issue they're facing, I'll give it to them knowing that I don't know the complete set of facts and they should take my opinion with a grain of salt. Are you a licensed Professional Engineer? If so, for the love of Odin's beard, stop giving informal advice, as you are exposing yourself to professional liability. Licensed professions - accounting, medicine, law, professional engineering - have extremely high duties of care to their clients. They are exposed to malpractice liability when things go wrong. They have ethical obligations. It can be extremely hard to fire delinquent or terrible clients. To put it a completely different way: lawyers give advice as their job. There is no such thing as "informal advice" from a lawyer, the same where there is no such thing as a "pick up game" with an NBA player. It is their primary occupation. I don't do it for free - I charge a pretty stiff hourly rate. And every time I take on a client, it has impacts on my firm's malpractice insurance. In fact, I cannot take on clients without the explicit approval of the managing partner at my law firm - I get his written approval for every single one. To make it clear, the managing partner is the guy who, if there was a war between all the lawyers, gets to wear the biggest, fanciest hat. So, no, I am not just going to do the thing I do for my day job as a favor to someone else, any more than your computer programmer friend wants to fix your iphone. Does that go some distance to answering your question?

polemic 10y ago
So... :IANYL: _I am not your laywer_

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]