Legal document preparers, if they intend to stay in business and out of trouble would never in a million years pretend to be attorneys. Refraining from offering legal advice is easy enough, as long as we can reasonably define "advice". I don't tell my customers (no I don't call them clients) they should or should not do anything. It's none of my business what they should or should not do, and not my place to tell them, whether they should or should not, divorce, adopt, answer, dispute, contest, establish, disestablish, motion, petition, or anything else. But if my customer wants to do any of those things, I'm happy to help.
I regularly tell my customers if they know what they want I can help, but if they're not sure of their rights, they need to do their own research or go see an attorney. I tell them all the time.
My fees are a small fraction of the fees that an attorney charges. My services are not all inclusive. But for many consumers, the services that I offer, at the price that they can afford, are the right fit. If legal document preparers are run out of business, citizens will not be able to get low cost legal assistance at all. The going rate for bankruptcy paperwork prepared by a nonlawyer bankruptcy petition preparer is $200. Attorneys charge much more.
Legal document preparers fill a business niche that consumers seek.
According to the Stanford Law Review, the vast majority of “unauthorized practice of law” cases are brought by bar organizations, not injured consumers. Of all “unauthorized practice of law” inquiries, investigations, and complaints in 1979, only 2 percent arose from consumer complaints. Coming soon, a court hearing - for a Motion to Compel. A Sarasota county judge,
the Honorable Lee Haworth has been assigned by the Florida Supreme Court to hear
a UPL case against a Sarasota business owner. (Judge Haworth is the same judge
who heard the Nancy Grant UPL case, and convicted Nancy Grant for UPL, and she
served four months in jail).
The Florida Bar UPL Committee wants the business owner to hand over four months
of her customer files. There has been no consumer complaint against the business
owner. So far the business owner has stood her ground, and refused to allow the
Florida Bar to infringe on her civil and constitutional rights. So the Florida
Bar has enlisted the power of the judiciary to compel her to give them access to
her files.
It is unclear exactly what the Florida Bar is looking for, and exactly what they
hope to find. We can only imagine that they hope to find anything that might
incriminate this business owner.
OCTOBER 12, SARASOTA FLORIDA, CONDUCT YOURSELVES ACCORDINGLY.
