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I can’t believe people are directly asking for legal advice on HN. Lawyers don’t don’t give out legal advice on the internet for free. OP, You might find one on

I can’t believe people are directly asking for legal advice on HN. Lawyers don’t don’t give out legal advice on the internet for free. OP, You might find one on here but don’t read any apparent advice; the comments will self-select against being legal advice. Nobody here has read your contract and not even a lawyer can answer your questions based on this information. Don’t take that as a hint to post more information! Your counterparty probably reads HN too. (Edit: there you go, post above edited to include a referral.) (Edit 2: OP should probably delete the substantive parts of their post or just delete the entire thing. It will show up on Google and their lawyers will find it.)

deleted 5y ago
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_asql 5y ago
I mean I know it's obvious but talk to a lawyer ASAP was what I needed to hear. Honestly I've just bottled my feelings about this for years and then they're pretty blinding uncorked. Lawyer is correct.
- cormacrelf 5y ago
  Can I reiterate that you should ask HN admins to delete this post in its entirety? Highlighting from the reasons I linked above about why public message boards are a bad place for legal assistance -- > *If there are actual or threatened legal proceedings, anything posted on this website may potentially be used in evidence against a person.* At the very least, tell the lawyer you end up hiring that you posted this. They would really, really want to know.
TechBro8615 5y ago
> Lawyers don’t don’t give out legal advice on the internet for free Why not? They some kind of information cartel running some kind of racket?
- cormacrelf 5y ago
  It's not information that is protected, it is the giving of advice. Giving it away without establishing a formal, confidential relationship with accountability is bad for so many reasons. Probably the biggest one is that if lawyers do it, they can be fined, or face other disciplinary action by their professional body. Go to any for-lawyers-by-lawyers subreddit and they will happily explain why. Here's the Australian /r/AusLaw's explanation, linked in the sidebar and in a advice-request-detector bot: https://www.reddit.com/r/auslaw/comments/zuv4m/why_cant_we_provide_legal_advice_in_this_subreddit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/auslaw/comments/zuv4m/why_cant_we_p...
- GianFabien 5y ago
  YES, it is called the "Bar Association". That's why lawyers and doctors live in fine houses and drive fancy cars. They don't give away for free the knowledge that they worked hard to attain over a decade or more.
  - D13Fd 5y ago
    That’s actually not the reason for hesitancy in giving advice in most cases. Lawyers hesitate to give advice online because: (1) It’s easy to form an seemingly-inadvertent attorney-client relationship. (2) Once you have an attorney-client relationship, you have many duties to the client under the ethics rules. (3) Once you form an attorney-client relationship, you can potentially be subject to a malpractice suit (justified or not) if things go sideways. In general, lawyers tend to be open to discussing legal issues in ways that don’t involve advice to specific people about their specific situations. They are many (many, many many) legal publications where lawyers give away their knowledge for free or the cost of the issue/article/book/etc. They just don’t usually want to form attorney-client relationships lightly.

deleted 5y ago

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_asql 5y ago

I mean I know it's obvious but talk to a lawyer ASAP was what I needed to hear. Honestly I've just bottled my feelings about this for years and then they're pretty blinding uncorked. Lawyer is correct.

cormacrelf 5y ago
Can I reiterate that you should ask HN admins to delete this post in its entirety? Highlighting from the reasons I linked above about why public message boards are a bad place for legal assistance -- > *If there are actual or threatened legal proceedings, anything posted on this website may potentially be used in evidence against a person.* At the very least, tell the lawyer you end up hiring that you posted this. They would really, really want to know.

TechBro8615 5y ago

> Lawyers don’t don’t give out legal advice on the internet for free Why not? They some kind of information cartel running some kind of racket?

cormacrelf 5y ago
It's not information that is protected, it is the giving of advice. Giving it away without establishing a formal, confidential relationship with accountability is bad for so many reasons. Probably the biggest one is that if lawyers do it, they can be fined, or face other disciplinary action by their professional body. Go to any for-lawyers-by-lawyers subreddit and they will happily explain why. Here's the Australian /r/AusLaw's explanation, linked in the sidebar and in a advice-request-detector bot: https://www.reddit.com/r/auslaw/comments/zuv4m/why_cant_we_provide_legal_advice_in_this_subreddit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/auslaw/comments/zuv4m/why_cant_we_p...
GianFabien 5y ago
YES, it is called the "Bar Association". That's why lawyers and doctors live in fine houses and drive fancy cars. They don't give away for free the knowledge that they worked hard to attain over a decade or more.
- D13Fd 5y ago
  That’s actually not the reason for hesitancy in giving advice in most cases. Lawyers hesitate to give advice online because: (1) It’s easy to form an seemingly-inadvertent attorney-client relationship. (2) Once you have an attorney-client relationship, you have many duties to the client under the ethics rules. (3) Once you form an attorney-client relationship, you can potentially be subject to a malpractice suit (justified or not) if things go sideways. In general, lawyers tend to be open to discussing legal issues in ways that don’t involve advice to specific people about their specific situations. They are many (many, many many) legal publications where lawyers give away their knowledge for free or the cost of the issue/article/book/etc. They just don’t usually want to form attorney-client relationships lightly.