3 ms·

There are several facts that affect whether the consequence of claiming to have a professional qualification is regulatory or criminal (being two branches of "i

by bmh_ca 9y ago

There are several facts that affect whether the consequence of claiming to have a professional qualification is regulatory or criminal (being two branches of "illegal"), including (but not limited to), in no particular order: 1. Who you send it to 2. The purpose of the communication 3. The consequences of the communication 4. Whether it is inter- or intra-state 5. What profession it is There are other questions that can factor in, but the general rule is: don't lie. Lying of any form for personal gain is generally a species of fraud, but pretending to have a professional qualification – even without gain – can also incur consequences. It's not limited to professional qualifications; some places still observe the crime of jactitation, which is pretending to be married.

peterwwillis 9y ago
To simplify this: Any title which is protected and governed by law makes it illegal for you to claim the title without being licensed to do so. "Engineer" is one of those titles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_en...
- muninn_ 9y ago
  From your link: "However, it is important to make a distinction between a "graduate engineer" and a "professional engineer" or "licensed engineer." A "graduate engineer" is anyone holding a degree in engineering from an accredited four-year university program, but is not licensed to practice or offer services to the public. Unlicensed engineers usually work as employees for a company, or as professors in engineering colleges, where they are governed under the industrial exemption clause. Some states, such as Ohio and New Jersey, prohibit the use of the term "engineer" by an unlicensed person unless it is part of the internal classification of their employer." So you don't need a license to call yourself an engineer. What this effectively does is permits engineers to perform engineering tasks and be called engineers in their line of work, without having to complete the examinations and all of that jazz. Otherwise, the entire system makes 0 sense. Furthermore, this demonstrates that you may call yourself an engineer if you have graduated from engineering college as you are under granted the title "graduate engineer", and thus can use engineer for shorthand, just as "engineers in training" and "professional engineers" may call themselves engineers for short. I doubt they want to always have to call themselves professional engineers or engineers in training or face a silly fine. Though I do fully support requiring licensure for some engineering related work. Basically, if you can fuck something up that can cost lives (aviation, bridges, buildings, etc...), you should have a license. Screwing up some code or mixing industrial chemicals normally doesn't fall into that category, though. If it does then yes you should be licensed.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    It's unwise to rely on a Wikipedia for legal analysis; at best you should treat it as a good starting point for your more detailed research.
    - muninn_ 9y ago
      I was quoting OP's link and not providing legal analysis - just demonstrating faulty reasoning provided by OP. Meanwhile I'll keep on being an engineer all the live long day :)
      - anigbrowl 9y ago
        There's no achievement in pointing out 'faulty reasoning' when the OP explicitly stated that it was a simplification. You just complicated it again to feel like you had a point.
        muninn_ 9y ago
        Where did I say it was an achievement? Was the OP an achievement? The simplification was inherently incorrect, and contradictory. To say that I "feel" that I had a point is nonsense. There's no "feeling" here, it's simply a stated factual point. All you have to do is search for "mechanical engineer" or something along those lines.
        anigbrowl 9y ago
        A narrow pedantry rarely leads to insight. The basic point that 'engineer' is a restricted title in many jurisdictions and contexts is sound, notwithstanding your emotional aversion to it. This has been explained through the thread at length, often by people more eloquent than I.
        muninn_ 9y ago
        Where have I disputed that it is a restricted title in some jurisdictions?
derefr 9y ago
A more interesting question, to me: would it be more or less dangerous to create a fictional person, who "is" a lawyer—or a fictional LLP, run by such a person†—and then send a letter written "as" them, representing you? By sending such a letter, I'm not claiming to be a lawyer, right? But then, what am I doing? † The law was at least smart enough here to require a partnership structure. Imagine if your fictional lawyer could be "employed by" a real shell corporation!
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > By sending such a letter, I'm not claiming to be a lawyer, right? Wrong. The author of the letter (you) is falsely claiming to be a lawyer. You are also falsely claiming other things, which may or may not have additional consequences.
  - derefr 9y ago
    I don't see how. I'm not falsely claiming that I'm a lawyer. I'm falsely claiming that someone else is a lawyer—a fictional person. (I write claims in the voices of fictional people all the time; I'm a novelist.) Is it because I would presumably be writing the letter with a first-person-viewpoint prose style? If so, then would it change anything if I just wrote a letter as myself, saying that I would contact my named, fictitious lawyer and have them draw up a suit against the recipient? Or, on a completely different (ridiculous) tangent: if a program generates an email claiming that it's a lawyer (not from a template written by a person; from genuine black-box deep-learning text generation, hooked straight up to an email client, without foreknowledge or expectation from the author that this would be the result), has the author of the program committed a crime? I would assume the author in that case more parallels the owner of an animal that did something that would have been a crime if a human did it, but is very blurry without the presumed mens rea humanity brings to the table.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      You are writing a letter that purports to be written by a lawyer; you are pretending to be a lawyer that happens to have a different name than your actual name. That is both pretending to be a lawyer, and pretending other false things. Consider if you change the communication medium from written to oral: if walk up to someone and claim a different name than is actually yours, claim to be a lawyer representing someone else (who you identify with your actual name), and then issue some demands, etc., it's pretty clear that you are claiming to be a lawyer. Changing the medium from oral communication to written doesn't change the essence at all.

by bmh_ca 9y ago

peterwwillis 9y ago

To simplify this: Any title which is protected and governed by law makes it illegal for you to claim the title without being licensed to do so. "Engineer" is one of those titles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_en...

muninn_ 9y ago
From your link: "However, it is important to make a distinction between a "graduate engineer" and a "professional engineer" or "licensed engineer." A "graduate engineer" is anyone holding a degree in engineering from an accredited four-year university program, but is not licensed to practice or offer services to the public. Unlicensed engineers usually work as employees for a company, or as professors in engineering colleges, where they are governed under the industrial exemption clause. Some states, such as Ohio and New Jersey, prohibit the use of the term "engineer" by an unlicensed person unless it is part of the internal classification of their employer." So you don't need a license to call yourself an engineer. What this effectively does is permits engineers to perform engineering tasks and be called engineers in their line of work, without having to complete the examinations and all of that jazz. Otherwise, the entire system makes 0 sense. Furthermore, this demonstrates that you may call yourself an engineer if you have graduated from engineering college as you are under granted the title "graduate engineer", and thus can use engineer for shorthand, just as "engineers in training" and "professional engineers" may call themselves engineers for short. I doubt they want to always have to call themselves professional engineers or engineers in training or face a silly fine. Though I do fully support requiring licensure for some engineering related work. Basically, if you can fuck something up that can cost lives (aviation, bridges, buildings, etc...), you should have a license. Screwing up some code or mixing industrial chemicals normally doesn't fall into that category, though. If it does then yes you should be licensed.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  It's unwise to rely on a Wikipedia for legal analysis; at best you should treat it as a good starting point for your more detailed research.
  - muninn_ 9y ago
    I was quoting OP's link and not providing legal analysis - just demonstrating faulty reasoning provided by OP. Meanwhile I'll keep on being an engineer all the live long day :)
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      There's no achievement in pointing out 'faulty reasoning' when the OP explicitly stated that it was a simplification. You just complicated it again to feel like you had a point.
      - muninn_ 9y ago
        Where did I say it was an achievement? Was the OP an achievement? The simplification was inherently incorrect, and contradictory. To say that I "feel" that I had a point is nonsense. There's no "feeling" here, it's simply a stated factual point. All you have to do is search for "mechanical engineer" or something along those lines.
        anigbrowl 9y ago
        A narrow pedantry rarely leads to insight. The basic point that 'engineer' is a restricted title in many jurisdictions and contexts is sound, notwithstanding your emotional aversion to it. This has been explained through the thread at length, often by people more eloquent than I.
        muninn_ 9y ago
        Where have I disputed that it is a restricted title in some jurisdictions?

derefr 9y ago

A more interesting question, to me: would it be more or less dangerous to create a fictional person, who "is" a lawyer—or a fictional LLP, run by such a person†—and then send a letter written "as" them, representing you? By sending such a letter, I'm not claiming to be a lawyer, right? But then, what am I doing? † The law was at least smart enough here to require a partnership structure. Imagine if your fictional lawyer could be "employed by" a real shell corporation!

dragonwriter 9y ago
> By sending such a letter, I'm not claiming to be a lawyer, right? Wrong. The author of the letter (you) is falsely claiming to be a lawyer. You are also falsely claiming other things, which may or may not have additional consequences.
- derefr 9y ago
  I don't see how. I'm not falsely claiming that I'm a lawyer. I'm falsely claiming that someone else is a lawyer—a fictional person. (I write claims in the voices of fictional people all the time; I'm a novelist.) Is it because I would presumably be writing the letter with a first-person-viewpoint prose style? If so, then would it change anything if I just wrote a letter as myself, saying that I would contact my named, fictitious lawyer and have them draw up a suit against the recipient? Or, on a completely different (ridiculous) tangent: if a program generates an email claiming that it's a lawyer (not from a template written by a person; from genuine black-box deep-learning text generation, hooked straight up to an email client, without foreknowledge or expectation from the author that this would be the result), has the author of the program committed a crime? I would assume the author in that case more parallels the owner of an animal that did something that would have been a crime if a human did it, but is very blurry without the presumed mens rea humanity brings to the table.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    You are writing a letter that purports to be written by a lawyer; you are pretending to be a lawyer that happens to have a different name than your actual name. That is both pretending to be a lawyer, and pretending other false things. Consider if you change the communication medium from written to oral: if walk up to someone and claim a different name than is actually yours, claim to be a lawyer representing someone else (who you identify with your actual name), and then issue some demands, etc., it's pretty clear that you are claiming to be a lawyer. Changing the medium from oral communication to written doesn't change the essence at all.