3 ms·

> 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.

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.