Please sign our petition!

Dear Customers and Friends:

I need your help. The organization I belong to, the Florida Association of Legal Document Preparers, is working to convince the Florida Bar to remove the shackles placed on our profession. I only just recently learned I can ask folks other than just our membership to help us get this goal reached. Here are the points involved in this battle (and it is a battle), to cause the Bar do the following:
1. Investigate Unauthorized Practice of Law when there is consumer harm. Not when there is "potential" harm.

2. If the Florida Bar demands that we follow their rules, make those rules clear, and set out in a fashion in which document preparers can easily find and refer to the rules.

3. Lighten up on the investigation of document preparers altogether. We feel we are being bullied and harassed by an entity that does not supervise us. The Florida Bar is authorized to investigate UPL but putting document preparers out of business is counterproductive all around.

4. Give us some recognition for what we do. We are part of the solution to the ongoing justice gap. Until consumers are being served fully, there is no need for us to be perceived as a threat to lawyers.

I’m asking you in all sincerity to please, follow the link below, and vote for our freedom to help those who can’t help themselves in these issues.

Here are some comments which have been left by others who have joined to support our cause:

"Attorneys are very expensive and there are many things that can be handled by an individual if they have the right forms."
"Many people need help in the courts and cannot afford a huge retainer fee just to get any kind of justice."
"Stop beating on the little people in the business

To each of you who I have helped type up legal paperwork, I’ve explained how, even if we have a college degree in Paralegal Studies, unless we work directly for an attorney, we aren’t allowed to call ourselves by that title. With no written guidelines, we are expected to know what we can and cannot say to a customer to avoid Unauthorized Practice of Law. Many unsuspecting paralegals in this situation have put themselves in the path of losing their right to help folks by calling themselves that title. People can by law,  get help from us to get their legal forms filled out, with the same accuracy and at a much lower cost than if they had to hire an attorney. This not only is wrong for the document prep folks, it hinders everyday people from saving money. The link I’m providing in this letter leads to a Petition our Petition.  You can truly be of help to right a wrong.

Here is the link to the petition: https://www.change.org/p/the-florida-bar-allow-nonlawyer-legal-document-preparers-to-continue-to-help-consumers-without-interference

Every signature counts. We now have over 400 signatures. Need 500.

Thank you so very much for your support!

Ruth Tick and the FALDP Team.

If a machine can do it - its NOT UPL.

The U.S. Appellate Case for the Second Federal District, Lola v. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, No. 14-3845 (2d Cir. 2015) interests me for reasons other than its stance on labor laws. I'm interested in the part about, if a machine can do it, then its not UPL.

David Lola who brought the case along with others who were in the same position, while working for a legal temporary employment agency reviewing documents. For this he was paid $25. per hour. His job was to go through the documents and search for certain words and phrases; categorize the documents; and mark other words and phrases to be redacted. (It sounds mind numbing). His place of employment was at a law firm in North Carolina [Skadden, et al].

Lola worked more than forty hours per week, but wasn't paid time and half for hours over forty. His employers' position was that he was not entitled to overtime pay because he was a professional and an attorney. They cited exemptions in the labor laws for overtime pay for professionals and attorneys. Lola argued that the work he was doing was not practicing law, because the work required absolutely no legal judgment.

He eventually won his case. The opinion included some interesting language.

“The gravamen of Lola’s complaint is that he performed document review under such tight constraints that he exercised no legal judgment whatsoever—he alleges that he used criteria developed by others to simply sort documents into different categories. Accepting those allegations as true, as we must on a motion to dismiss, we find that Lola adequately alleged in his complaint that he failed to exercise any legal judgment in performing his duties for Defendants. A fair reading of the complaint in the light most favorable to Lola is that he provided services that a machine could have provided. The parties themselves agreed at oral argument that an individual who, in the course of reviewing discovery documents, undertakes tasks that could otherwise be performed entirely by a machine cannot be said to engage in the practice of law.”

The reason I find this so interesting is that document preparers are frequently investigated for the unauthorized practice of law (UPL). And if the law of the land is that if it could be automated then its not practicing law, we could use that argument in almost every investigation against one of us. Its not exactly the law of the land, it is the law in the Second Federal District, but still persuasive.

Document preparers prepare documents. We don't provide legal advice or legal judgment. Certainly a lot of what we do could be done by artificial intelligence (AI), aka machines, aka computer software. Our activities may not be commonly done by AI but they could. A computer could automatically format documents, intake information, ask questions, and so on. A computer program can certainly know when to ask additional questions and use if/then logic.

So … since a computer could certainly do what I do in preparing documents, then that must mean that nothing I do can be considered the unauthorized practice of law. Right?

On White Privilege

I've been conducting my own social experiment on social media. I came across an article on my Facebook feed about a man, John Placek, in Pennsylvania that posted a billboard that sparked some racial controversy.

The message on the billboard dissolves from the statement: “whites have rights” to a message about Jussie Smollett -- the actor involved in the hoax attack in Chicago. Regarding the billboard Placek (who is white) stated: “We gotta get people talking. We gotta get them excited. And that’s what I’ve done. The board was never meant to hurt anybody. I would never do that. I’m a patriot. I’m an American. Period,”

Placek also stated: “Racism is misunderstood in America and I want to have the conversation," he said. “We need to get over: I’m black. You’re white. You’re Hispanic. Who cares? I don’t care about that. I do care about how you act and how you stand for my flag, our flag.”

I agree with some of what he says, but do not believe he simply wants to start a dialogue. I believe he is racist and wants to tell the world that he is. I also take exception to his statements about patriotism. There is nothing more patriotic than dissent. As for Jussie Smollett, who by all accounts staged a racist attack on himself - he couldn't have come up with a more idiotic thing to do.

But, here's where it gets interesting. I posted the following:

“I think the conversation needs to be about privilege, not rights. In theory, we all have equal rights. But, in practice white privilege is alive and well. Choose whatever metric makes you happy ... economic, incarceration rates, education levels, or whatever. Whites are at the top of the spectrum, not by anything white people have done, but just because they're white. That's called privilege. The billboard is blatantly racist. He's calling out people to argue with him. Saying, poor me, I'm white and nobody fights for my rights. Well, that's because white people enjoy white privilege at every turn. He can say what he wants in his billboard and then own up to the consequences. Free speech.”

For that, I received an interesting set of responses:

“the term “ white privilege “ is racist in its self . What’s it called when. Once group says another group you have no rights to talk about racism ? Oh yes , bigoted and racist”

“your post is blatantly racist. Had the board said any other race you wouldn’t of said anything. Everyone has rights. Just because you’re salty about your lack of success doesn’t make it anyone else’s fault. You have no idea how anyone else grew up.”

“you’re isolating a group based on the color of their skin”

“White privilege has been debunked many times.”

“Everything you named has more to do with personal choices than any type of privilege. People have to take responsibility for their own choices instead of blaming another person's "privilege." One person's success doesn't take away from another person's success. If you don't want to be incarcerated then don't commit crimes. If you want an education then work hard and pay for it. Not to mention, there are many trade skills and manual labor jobs that don't require you to pay anything to learn it. The schooling is essentially free for many trade skills. Which is a field dominated by white males because white males are the ones willing to do the job. Everyone in this country has equal opportunity. Not everyone has equal outcome due to their own personal choices. That has nothing to do with race or privilege. “

I suppose the respondents assume I'm not white. I am white. I recognize my white privilege and am thankful for it. Privilege is like having a head start in a foot race. If all run at the same speed, the runners with the head start always win. Runners without the head start can win, but to do so, they have to train harder and run faster just to level the playing field. Just to try to make things fair. But the race set up like this can never be fair because the runners without the head start had to train harder and run faster to even have a chance of winning.

In this article, I'm not going to cite statistics to support my claim that white privilege is alive and well in the United States. I believe we need a dialogue. I welcome comments. Because if we are complacent about racism, we are no better than the German people who during WWII stood by as the Nazis murdered innocent people.

Links to news story and video:

Video