Unauthorized Practice Of Law Research Articles

The Ethics of Legal Process Outsourcing in India: Globalization and Commodification

The responsibility of lawyers grows as their practices grow with time. The responsibility from becoming a part time assistant to a full-time employee along with the power of supervising, regulating increases their liability. The economy of a country changes with time and in this era of economic condition the demand for cost effective and time effective method of completion of legal process is in demand by the public and the process of Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) has turned out to be the perfect mechanism to achieve it and attract the clients. The process of outsourcing has no longer remained a novelty but has become a reality in this 21st century for a developing nation like India. With the emergence of time, India has become one of the most favorable destinations amongst legal outsourcers due to its convenient time zones and a majority of English-speaking population. However, amidst the evolving nature of the outsourcing industry in India, serious ethical, legal and professional issues are concerned with it. Ethical implications like client confidentiality, conflict of interest, unauthorized practice of law, disclosure to clients and billing practices have always hinders the growth of the process in India. Thus, this paper attempts to point out the possible ethical concerns that may arise out of the outsourcing process and proceeds to assess the existing regulations that deals with the ethical issues of outsourcing by examining the rules and guidelines that govern outsourcing in India and United States. Moreover, the paper tends to assess the lacunae in the regulatory framework that controls the outsourcing process in India and tries to seek some recommendations to improve the condition of the same and the future prospects of the LPO firms so as to be at par with other developed nations like United States.

Arbitration and the Unauthorized Practice of Law

In the April Alternatives, the author presented an introduction to two hypotheticals of potential ethical dilemmas in arbitration practice by discussing the key Model Rules of Professional Conduct affecting attorneys who work in arbitration. Specifically, he focused on Rule 3.3 to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which addresses the lawyer as advocate. He highlighted Model Rule 1.0 definitions, Model Rule 1.6 on confidentiality, and the lawyer's duty of candor to the tribunal. The rules, published by the American Bar Association, can be found at http://bit.ly/2raI3Bh; Part 1 of this article can be found at “Practice Focus: The Duty of Candor, Inadvertent Production of Documents, and Your Arbitration Work,” 36 Alternatives 51 (April 2018)(available at https://bit.ly/2IKTlEz). Part 1's hypotheticals discussed document production and the duty of candor. In this month's concluding Part 2, a third hypothetical analyzes the ethical issues in arbitration representation.

The Birth of the Unauthorized Practice of Law Movement

Drawing on original historical research, this article provides the most comprehensive view to date of the birth of the modern movement to prohibit the unauthorized practice of law. Focusing on the work of bar associations in Illinois and New York in the late 1800s and early 1900s, this article chronicles how newly formed bar associations began to curb the unauthorized practice of law. Their efforts eventually led to a well-established state constitutional law principle that state courts, not state legislatures, have the power to define the practice of law and who can practice law. This power currently has a significant impact on exploring alternative ways to increase access to justice. Unlike other areas, such as health care, state legislatures cannot create new categories of licensed professionals to provide legal services in order to increase access to legal services. At the time that bar associations began to address the unauthorized practice of law, this exclusive power of state courts was not well-established. In fact, as the research in this article demonstrates, early bar associations initially saw state legislatures as appropriate partners to define the practice of law and help them curb the unauthorized practice of law. The exclusion of legislatures came later. Examining this history raises the question of whether the exclusion of legislatures is mandated by separation of powers, or whether they were excluded because, pragmatically, courts were a better partner for promoting lawyers’ self-interests. If the latter, then the current power of the state courts can and may become an artifact of history.

Alternative Business Structures' 'Charity Step' to Ending the General Practitioner

Alternative Business Structures' 'Charity Step' to Ending the General Practitioner

2018 A Legal Research Odyssey: Artificial Intelligence as Disruptor

Cognitive computing is revolutionizing finance through the ability to combine structured and unstructured data and provide precise market analysis. It is also revolutionizing medicine by providing well-informed options for diagnoses. Analogously, ROSS, a progeny of IBM’s Watson, is set to revolutionize the legal field by bringing cognitive computing to legal research. While ROSS is currently being touted as possessing the requisite sophistication to perform effortless legal research, there is a real danger in a technology like ROSS causing premature disruption. As in medicine and finance, cognitive computing has the power to make legal research more efficient. But the technology is not ready to replace the need for law students to learn sound legal research process and strategy. When done properly, legal research is a highly creative skill that requires a deep level of analysis. Law librarians must infuse law students with an understanding of legal research process, as well as instruct on the practical aspects of using artificial intelligence responsibly in the face of algorithmic transparency, the duty of technology competence, malpractice pitfalls, and the unauthorized practice of law.

Assisting Rural Domestic Violence Victims: The Local Librarian's Role

Rules prohibiting the unauthorized practice of law by non-lawyers serve many important purposes: limiting fraudulent activities, protecting the public, protecting the bar, and many more. However, those valid purposes can limit non-lawyers from engaging in otherwise helpful activities, particularly in the domestic violence arena. For instance, the laws against the unauthorized practice of law have been relaxed in some states, including Illinois, in the case of laypersons working to assist domestic violence victims in court to allow those who cannot afford a lawyer to have a helping hand from a knowledgeable and trained layperson or victim advocate. Librarians are ideally suited, especially in rural areas, to serve as advocates, at least within the confines of the library, to domestic violence victims as well. Indeed, with the proper training, librarians could be an ideal partner to combating domestic abuse in rural areas, as many victims of domestic abuse are prevented from working outside the home and may only be permitted by their abuser to access public places, like a library, without punishment. To establish this premise, the Article will begin by attempting to define the term rural to better form a context for the surrounding discussion of a specific portion of the domestic violence victim population. Next, the Article will further elaborate on the specific needs of domestic violence victims in rural areas, where shelters and legal services are often limited or absent. Then, the Article will explain why unauthorized practice of law (UPL) policies exist generally and how they have been interpreted to apply to librarians. Additionally, the relaxation of domestic UPL policies, with respect to domestic violence advocates, will be explained. Finally, some examples of the justification for and use of librarians to serve the domestic violence population will be examined. The Article will conclude with a plea for more efforts to train rural librarians to support domestic violence victims. Copyright 2016 Sara Rachel Benson (35 pages) University of Illinois College of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 15-34 Language: en

Arbitration, the law market, and the law of lawyering

This paper builds on Larry Ribstein's path-breaking work concerning the role of lawyers and bar associations in jurisdictional competition and law production. According to Ribstein, unauthorized practice of law (UPL) rules, which create barriers to entry preventing out-of-state attorney and other professionals from providing services, can actually encourage the development of higher quality legal rules in a state. Ribstein's work also focused on the role of contractual choice clauses in promoting jurisdictional competition for substantive and procedural legal rules. This paper builds on his insights by incorporating the increasingly important role of arbitration into Ribstein's framework and testing empirically for possible effects of jurisdictional competition for arbitration business. We also consider and empirically test for the potential effects of jurisdictional competition on the production of law, including special rules exempting arbitration from ordinary UPL rules and state laws concerning arbitration. Our findings suggest that the adoption of a liberal UPL rule may have a significant effect on attracting legal business, but most other legal changes do not. Moreover, our findings also suggest that some (although not all) of these legal reforms are enacted as coordinated packages, validating Ribstein's insights about the political economy of law production. Finally, our findings suggest that lawyers in many states are finding ways to cleverly respond to international competitive pressures while simultaneously insulating domestic dispute resolution from similar forces, a dynamic not explored in Ribstein's work, and the Supreme Court's strong preemptive stance toward the Federal Arbitration Act may be fueling this segregation.

Unauthorized practice of law and the production of lawyers

Discussions regarding the ‘flooding’ of the legal profession have often focused on issues of jurisprudence and legal culture (how people resolve disputes), accessibility to legal education (growth in the number of law schools), social and cultural factors (the status of the profession) and structural barriers to professional entry (how difficult it is to become a lawyer). In this paper I discuss the increasing number of lawyers in Israel (now the highest per capita in developed countries) in reference to an additional factor: the most extensive rules regarding unauthorized practice of law, strictly guarded and enforced by the Israeli Bar Association. In Israeli society law has increasingly become an accepted forum for resolving private and public disputes. At the same time, any kind of activity entailing provision of legal advice, legal documentation or representation is restricted to lawyers only – thus entry into the profession becomes the only way to take part and become engaged in the field of legal services.

Arkansas

Unlike some other jurisdictions, Arkansas does not typically have large annual volumes of oil and gas related cases or legislation. The most recent year was pretty normal in that respect. This Article will review several changes in Arkansas oil and gas law: (a) one legislative change, itself inspired by a Justice's dissenting opinion in a case interpreting the previous statute; (b) three fairly unremarkable opinions of the Arkansas Court of Appeals; (c) and two noteworthy federal district court opinions-the first determined the ownership of coal-bed methane gas between competing gas and coal owners, and the second, rather interesting ruling, involved a group of landmen's possible unauthorized practice of law.

Navigating Residential Attorney Approvals: Finding a Better Judicial North Star

The article traces the development of attorney approval clauses and describes the court rulings on the unauthorized practice of law that led to the development of these clauses. The article describes how a well-trained attorney can protect home buyers and sellers at the contract formation stage and thereafter far better than a broker, a title company, or a lender. Understanding what a well-trained attorney would ordinarily do when representing a party contemplating entering into a purchase and sales contract is fundamental to analyzing whether attorney approval clauses are serving their intended function.The author argues that, to the extent that attorney approval clauses were intended to provide buyers and sellers with the means to be competently and legitimately represented by an attorney, the typical wording of many attorney approval clauses and certain court interpretations of the clauses have greatly impeded this goal. The article critiques the different wording contained in attorney approval clauses and then identifies instances of judicial misapplication of contract principles when interpreting attorney approval clauses (mischaracterizing the clauses as conditional acceptances and any proposed modifications to the contract as counteroffers). The author argues that such mischaracterizations have opened the door to bad faith rejections of a contract, and have impeded an attorney’s ability to competently and legitimately represent their client. In addition, the article contends that, although courts require that attorneys act in good faith when exercising the attorney approval clause, courts’ failure to require that attorneys state the reason(s) for their disapproval of the contract or to provide proposed changes to the contract weakens the effectiveness of such a requirement and forces attorneys into real dilemmas when their clients pressure them to improperly disapprove a contract. The article asserts that courts’ failure to adequately define the “good faith-bad faith” dichotomy forces many attorneys to make shot-in-the dark type judgments on how to zealously represent their client while properly exercising the attorney approval clause.The article concludes by recommending that courts interpret these attorney approval clauses in a fashion that better comports with the public interest. It also recommends to associations of brokers and bar associations of lawyers how to draft attorney clauses for residential purchase agreements to better serve the purpose of such clauses. The author advises attorneys on how to fulfill their duty of zealous representation and, at the same time, satisfy the good faith requirement when exercising an attorney approval clause under current case law.

Ethics of Blawging

Addresses the legal ethical issues that face lawyers who blog (or blawg), including the potential for disclosure of client confidences, inadvertent formation of attorney-client relationships, and the unauthorized practice of law.

In re Arons: The Plight of the 'Unrich' in Obtaining Legal Services

This essay uses the story of In re Arons to demonstrate the plight most Americans face when they need legal services, but can neither obtain nor afford them. In re Arons was an effort by the State of Delaware to enforce its prohibition against the unauthorized practice of law (UPL) to deny parents of children with disabilities the right to non-lawyer assistance in due process hearings held under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA nominally guarantees all children with disabilities a free and appropriate public education. But educating disabled children can be expensive and financially strapped school boards frequently cut corners. IDEA sets up a process for resolving disputes between parents and school boards on matters affecting a child's education. But the statute's procedures are so complex that many parents are unable to navigate them without assistance. The school boards, of course, are aided by lawyers and in-house experts. Anticipating this disparity, IDEA authorizes parents to be accompanied and advised in IDEA proceedings by counsel and by individuals with special knowledge and training with respect to children with disabilities. Delaware took the position that this authorization did not entitle non-lawyer experts to provide the equivalent of legal assistance, and the Delaware Supreme Court upheld charges its Office of Disciplinary Counsel brought against experts who had successfully assisted a number of parents in their battles with Delaware school boards. The result is that parents of children with disabilities in Delaware, who can neither afford nor find lawyers willing to represent them, are faced with the Hobson's choice of fighting the school boards on their own or forgoing their right to challenge school board decisions that adversely affect their children. The essay uses In re Arons to raise questions about the wisdom of the lawyer monopoly on the provision of legal services, especially those that involve questions that are not intrinsically legal but instead turn on complex factual questions that are the province of other disciplines. The essay also examines more broadly the plight of most Americans who, for all practical purposes, have been priced out of the market for lawyer-only legal services. Except for high-value cases that attract contingency-fee lawyers, most Americans of average or modest means cannot afford anything more than the most basic legal service. The ABA and the Legal Services Corporation estimate that 80 to 90 percent of the legal needs of the poor go unmet, and that estimate does not change appreciably for the middle class. The essay lays much of the blame for this crisis in the delivery of legal services on the organized bar, which has not only sowed the seeds of the crisis, but has failed to take serious measures to resolve it.

Jurisdictional Disputes and the Unauthorized Practice of Law

ABSTRACT Andrew Abbott's sociological theory of the professions is applied to the field of law by taking the organized bar's enforcement of “unauthorized practice of law” rules as an example of a jurisdictional dispute. In contrast to traditional “trait-theory,” which defines professions according to whether they meet a defined set of criteria, Abbott argues that professional practice is constituted by a series of jurisdictional disputes that takes place between occupational groups for control over particular tasks. These disputes may re-erupt when the circumstances of the environment change. Rapid changes in information technology are examples of such disturbances that may trigger a renegotiation of previously settled jurisdictional boundaries between groups. The history of unauthorized practice enforcement is reviewed with an emphasis on the recent controversy between the Texas enforcement authorities and Nolo Press, a publisher of self-help legal materials. The dispute was triggered by the interactive nature of a software product, not a traditional stand-alone print publication, and this is consistent with Abbott's theory. The question of how unauthorized practice enforcement might impact the work of the reference librarian is then considered. While the line between good reference work and a potential unauthorized practice of law violation is often ambiguous, it is concluded that the resolution of this issue should be left to librarians, not imposed by external enforcement authorities.

How to Avoid the Unauthorized Practice of Law at the Reference Desk

Summary A librarian's duty to avoid the unauthorized practice of law limits what reference services can be provided. Traditional approaches to reference services are being influenced by new initiatives in delivering legal services and information. Pro se patrons and the reference librarians who serve them benefit from the web-based resources, authorized non-lawyer assistance programs, and other innovative programs now available. Identifying new resources and using them effectively should enable a librarian to provide excellent reference service while avoiding the unauthorized practice of law.

Legally Speaking-Reference Questions and the Unauthorized Practice of Law

Legally Speaking-Reference Questions and the Unauthorized Practice of Law

Accounting Firms and the Unauthorized Practice of Law: Who Is the Bar Really Trying to Protect?

Accounting Firms and the Unauthorized Practice of Law: Who Is the Bar Really Trying to Protect?

The response: The goal is to inform, not impede, ADR

Alternatives to the High Cost of LitigationVolume 18, Issue 6 p. 124-125 ADR Ethics Forum The response: The goal is to inform, not impede, ADR Geetha Ravindra, Geetha Ravindra The author is director of the Department of Dispute Resolution Services in the Administrative Office of the Supreme Court of Virginia in Richmond. She was a member of the committee formed that helped write the state's unauthorized practice of law guidelines.Search for more papers by this author Geetha Ravindra, Geetha Ravindra The author is director of the Department of Dispute Resolution Services in the Administrative Office of the Supreme Court of Virginia in Richmond. She was a member of the committee formed that helped write the state's unauthorized practice of law guidelines.Search for more papers by this author First published: 10 July 2009 https://doi.org/10.1002/alt.3810180610 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume18, Issue6January 2000Pages 124-125 RelatedInformation

From the Reference Desk to the Jail House

This article provides guidance and suggestion for librarians to use in attempting to define and avoid the line between legal reference and legal advice. It outlines the dangers that all information professionals face when providing legal information. The main dangers are crossing the line over to legal advice and violating statutory and case law prohibitions against the unauthorized practice of law and incurring potential malpractice liability.

The Unauthorized Practice of Law by Librarians

The Unauthorized Practice of Law by Librarians

Answering Legal Questions: Refernce or Unauthorized Practice of Law?

Answering Legal Questions: Refernce or Unauthorized Practice of Law?