Lawsuit Claims LegalZoom Is Practicing Law Without a License 246
Bob the Super Hamste writes "Fortune has an interesting piece about a federal class action law suit against LegalZoom claiming that its software is illegally practicing law without a license. The law suit seeks to recover money from LegalZoom for every resident in Missouri who has used LegalZoom regardless of how satisfied the users were of the service. Currently Missouri law states that an individual who paid money to a non lawyer for legal services is entitled to sue the provider for 3 times the amount paid."
Who wins.......... (Score:2, Insightful)
And who wins here????? You guessed it, the LAWYERS!!!!
Re:Who wins.......... (Score:5, Insightful)
And who wins here????? You guessed it, the LAWYERS!!!!
More than any other profession, those who practice law have the ability and influence to assure their lack of competition from computer aplications.
You could write a program to scour a database of every legal decision, even include some fuzzy logic to handle grey areas - at the very least to bring them to your attention, and above all put it on plain english, not that "Lawyer Speak" you see on legal documents (which I'm quite positive are there to baffle and bamboozle the general public) and you would be driven into the dirt for having the audacity to do it.
Lawyers have in the past decried software legal aids as providing customers with less than the best service possible (thus preserving their positions), but as we see computer chess games surpass even the best human opponents you can well assume a computer could do far more research and connect far more dots than the finest legal mind ever could, in mere seconds.
The day will come when they won't have a leg to stand on, but as Science Fiction has often charged humanity will discriminate against cyber-persons, you can see the Legal Community are at the forefront.
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Amen, brother! (in the secular sense)
This case is yet another example why yet another sector of the economy can't adapt to new realities and increase its efficiency.
Re:Who wins.......... (Score:5, Funny)
Forget Jeopardy, let's get a computer to pass the bar exam. ;-) As long as we don't program in self-interest too..
"April 19, 2015 ... at 8:11 PM ... Lawnet became self aware, starting a chain of events that led to an intense legal battle between man and machine."
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Re:Who wins.......... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lawyers have in the past decried software legal aids as providing customers with less than the best service possible (thus preserving their positions), but as we see computer chess games surpass even the best human opponents you can well assume a computer could do far more research and connect far more dots than the finest legal mind ever could, in mere seconds.
The same day you can point a computer to wikipedia and have Lt. Cmdr. Data. And no, Watson doesn't come close. Sure you can throw together some keyword software but to actually parse and understand what a legal text really is about, apply it to your case and give you something like a legal argument would take far more strong AI than what's available.
Chess is in many ways ridiculously simple, the positions are finite, the rules absolute. But your legal case is not exactly like any other legal case and good luck trying to map all the rules like "the right to free speech" but it actually means drawings too and it doesn't mean shouting fire in a crowded theater. Without a huge number of abstract concepts beyond what's in the text itself you'll get nowhere.
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... and good luck trying to map all the rules like "the right to free speech" but it actually means drawings too and it doesn't mean shouting fire in a crowded theater.
Actually, this is precisely why computers can't get this right, because most people can't get it right. Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) ruled that shouting fire in a crowded theater was less than the bar required to make speech illegal, and moved the bar to incitement of "imminent lawless action".
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And who wins here????? You guessed it, the LAWYERS!!!!
A lawyer is someone you hire to protect you from others in the same profession. The only other profession I can think of like that is extortionist.
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I am not a lawyer.
Such technology already exists to a certain extent. Historically doing the research for a case would involve teams of junior lawyers reading through libraries of previous cases. Now all of that information is digitized and searching for relevant stuff is much quicker.
It's not a stretch of the imagination to see that eventually such software will be able to reason about the data found.
You are right however in that it wouldn't exits outside the control of the legal profession. Only those guy
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"You, sir, have no business talking about the law or chess if you are going to equate the law to chess."
You are absolutely right. Law is much more analogous to "So You Think You Can Dance...?"
So much for their "guarantees" (Score:3)
Their documents might hold up in court, but their company may not.
Re:So much for their "guarantees" (Score:4, Insightful)
not quite, whether you are referring to legalzoom or the company suing them.
in irony, suing legalzoom and referencing them on slashdot is probably providing them quite the boom in business.
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What's a bus full of lawyers going off a cliff? (Score:5, Funny)
What do you call a bus full of lawyers going off a cliff?
A comedy.
What if there's an empty seat?
A tragedy!
Re:What's a bus full of lawyers going off a cliff? (Score:5, Funny)
Q: How do you save a lawyer from drowning?
A: Take your foot off his head.
Q: What do you have if there's a lawyer buried up to his neck in sand?
A: Not nearly enough sand.
Re:What's a bus full of lawyers going off a cliff? (Score:5, Funny)
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No, there are a few good lawyers out there. It's other 99% that give them a bad name.
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What do you call 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A bloody good start.
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What's the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?
One's a bottom sucking scum dweller and the other is a fish.
Re:What's a bus full of lawyers going off a cliff? (Score:4, Funny)
A woman goes to her gynecologist for her regular exam. While there, the doctor asks if she has any questions, or has been experiencing anything unusual.
"Well doctor, my husband has been asking more and more for anal sex. But I'm just not sure if it's safe."
The doctor starts telling her that this is perfectly fine, and done correctly, anal sex can be pain free and enjoyable. "Just make sure he uses a condom when you do it, to help prevent pregnancy," he said.
"Pregnancy?" she asked, confused. "I didn't think you could get pregnant from anal sex."
"Of course," he stated. "Where do you think lawyers come from?"
A will is a legal document (Score:5, Interesting)
By Missouri law-
"Missouri's statutes define law practice as, among other things, "the drawing or the . . . assisting in the drawing for a valuable consideration of any paper, document or instrument affecting . . . [legal] rights."
So if I, all by myself, draws up a will, I'm breaking the law? According to TFA, every single page on the website has disclaimers that this is not true legal advice. Another interesting facet is if found guilty, would this affect EULAs?
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What makes you think EULAs are drafted without legal counsel?
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What makes you think EULAs are drafted without legal counsel?
I think he means LegalZoom's ELUA that the users accepted when they used the service.
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NOTWITHSTANDING the foregoing statement of THE PARTY, mine is drafted with oh so judicious use of copy and paste.
No (Score:4, Informative)
The statute was obviously intended to deal with fake lawyers - yes there are people who will brave the social opprobrium of claiming to be a lawyer in exchange for money. However, provided that the website doesn't itself produce wills, deeds or other legal instruments, it should be in the clear.
This is a grey area - the law could have benefits in preventing the automatic generation of, say, RIAA-type fishing expedition claim documents. It would be interesting if a real lawyer were to comment on the EULA issue; there is probably a good reason why it is excluded.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
You can use the same argument about doctors, or virtually any "profession" that claims to have standards. Auto mechanics have to be certified in some jurisdictions and you can bet there are laws in place in those locations that make it a crime to pretend to be an auto mechanic without proper (legal) certification.
This goes back to guilds and unions. If you aren't a member of the guild then you can't do whatever it is the guild members do, whether it is weaving, being an apothecary or a wheelwright. We have preserved this today with lots of professional societies and groups taking the place of the guilds. You can't be a lawyer if you don't pass the state bar exam - and, coincidently, join the bar association for the state. You can't be a doctor unless you are certified as a doctor in that state. And there are plenty of places where you can't be an electrician if you aren't a member of the IBEW union. Plumbers are required to be union plumbers in some places as well.
The defense of this is that you are at least partially assured of competence when dealng with a guild member. You have a "standards body" to go complain to if you are cheated or are dealt with incompetently. If you choose to deal with non-guild members you are pretty much on your own. Today if you prefer to go to an alternative medical practitioner who chants over you will dosing you with dung balls and mouse ears it is your legally-protected choice. However, if you don't get better or your broken leg doesn't heal properly good luck with (a) finding your practiticioner and (b) getting a lawsuit to stick. You might - might - have better luck with a non-union electrician in a jurisdiction where such are not legal.
So sure, the laws are most definitely on the side of the guilds. It has been that way for around a thousand years or so. The guilds exist for a reason and certainly a thousand years ago it was a very good reason. Today there are still some good reasons for them but the volume of cultural, societal and legal inertia behind the guilds makes it very unlikely we are going to move away from this sort of system any time soon.
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There's an additional part you're missing. In most licensed professions, you are taking on legal liability for your work. For example, you cannot call yourself an architect if not licensed. A licensed architect is legally responsible for the safety of the occupants of the building he designs. If the architect does not meet construction code and safety standards, any death or harm to the occupants is deemed his fault. Same thing for civil engineers, doctors, and most licensed professions.
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The guilds exist for a reason and certainly a thousand years ago it was a very good reason.
Yes, the reason was to promote the training of new experts in the field. The reason for the guilds being granted monopoly status in that field, however, did not exist for a good reason. That happened in order to protect guild members from competition that was willing to work for less. One of the things that happened when guilds were granted monopolies is that they were able to get much greater profits from tasks that required little or no actual trainning. This meant the Master Craftsman could charge high f
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So if I, all by myself, draws up a will, I'm breaking the law?
Of course not. If you did it all by yourself you didn't pay anyone.
However if you bought a book on how to do it, paper, and a pen... you apparently can sue each of those companies for "assisting" you. Possibly the electric company for providing you light while doing it as well.
That's clearly where the software felt it should be classed. They'll argue the end user is drawing up the will unassisted, and that their software is in the same class as a
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Of course not. If you did it all by yourself you didn't pay anyone.
However if you bought a book on how to do it, paper, and a pen... you apparently can sue each of those companies for "assisting" you.
Actually that's already been done and tried and failed. From TFA:
But in 1978 the Missouri Supreme Court effectively narrowed that language when it reviewed a case in which Missouri bar authorities sought to punish the sellers of a divorce kit that consisted of nothing but blank legal forms and instruction booklets for filling them out. The court ruled that merely marketing such materials did not amount to practicing law absent "personal advice as to legal remedies or the consequences of flowing therefrom."
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So if I, all by myself, draws up a will, I'm breaking the law?
When my grandmother moved into a nursing home, I needed to clear title to her house.
That was my introduction to the mischief and malice that can be written into a will -- and how the heirs trying to put things to right on their own --- and doing it on the cheap -- can only make things worse.
Life in the post-Watson world. (Score:2)
I wonder if they could win their case by pointing the software in question at the litigation against it Watson style?
My guess is that's not what LegalZoom does, but...
Still, makes me wonder what was the driver for this lawsuit. Did someone get burned because the software screwed them?
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It really seems like too little money to bother with. I think there most expensive service is 300 dollars.
Legalzoom offers a service where a "customer care" reviews your document, if they aren't lawyers, that might be the issue.
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Re:Life in the post-Watson world. (Score:4, Informative)
A lawyer got burned is what happened.
Chances are there was a group of lawyers that sat around in an overly expensive office and drafted (read, photocopied) paperwork for six figure salaries. They then found a website that threatened to do everything they did for free. Now having lots of free time they decide to actually use their education and sue their competition out of existence.
Lesson: Never automate a lawyers or a congressman job. You can automate and outsource the entire rest of the country, but if you even look wrong at those professions you will be sued out of existence.
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Lesson: Never automate a lawyers or a congressman job. You can automate and outsource the entire rest of the country, but if you even look wrong at those professions you will be sued out of existence.
Dead men don't sue.
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In December 2009 LegalZoom customer Todd Janson, later joined by two others, filed a class-action against LegalZoom in Jefferson City. The plaintiffs don't claim to have suffered any injury from using the software. But Missouri law says that someone who has paid money to a non-lawyer for legal services is entitled to sue the poseur for a sum equal to three times what he paid. So the suit seeks that recovery for every Missouri resident who used LegalZoom since December 17, 2004—regardless of how satisfied they might have been with the service. The lead lawyer is Tim Van Ronzelen of Jefferson City's Cook, Vetter, Doerhoff & Landwehr.
They weren't harmed... just greedy.
Legal Templates (Score:5, Insightful)
That's pretty dumb. As far as I know, LegalZoom isn't practicing law so much as providing people with templates for documents where they can fill in bits that they want and delete other bits they don't want. This is not the same as giving people legal advice, or engaging in an attorney-client relationship with anyone.
Besides, if this is successful, it'll have a detrimental effect to authors and publishers who publish books with legal templates (Draft your own Will books, for instance), most of which are for really simple stuff like wills or simple contracts. It's going to deny the poorest people access to making these documents because it's going to force them to seek attorneys who are often too expensive.
Re:Legal Templates (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, if this is successful, it'll have a detrimental effect to authors and publishers who publish books with legal templates (Draft your own Will books, for instance), most of which are for really simple stuff like wills or simple contracts. It's going to deny the poorest people access to making these documents because it's going to force them to seek attorneys who are often too expensive.
That is the idea here. The lawyers don't like those books either. The whole point of laws like the one in this case is to protect certain groups from competition (or to force those who go into certain businesses to pay dues to an organization).
Re:Legal Templates (Score:4, Insightful)
>> It's going to deny the poorest people access to making these documents because it's going to force them to seek attorneys who are often too expensive.
> That is the idea here. The lawyers don't like those books either. The whole point of laws like the one in this case is to protect certain groups from competition
Makes for an interesting lens through which to view the ethics of the software engineering culture. Many of us, particularly on this forum, are contributors to F/LOSS -- very similar to legal templates. There are, however, those such as Microsoft who have at times sought to steer the government to inhibit the flow of F/LOSS. As I reflect on the coders, engineers, and scientists in the field I have known, it strikes me that their level of support for F/LOSS correlates well with their sense of ethics. The most honorable are also those who most strongly advocate for broader publication of source code. Perhaps altruism, though I am skeptical of that term; perhaps more out of a sense of long-term rational self-interest -- advocating for the rising tide of society which raises all ships.
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I'm waiting for the AAA [google.com] to sue TurboTax and their ilk. The tipping point is nearly here... Prepare yourself!!
Kangaroo court (Score:5, Funny)
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The ironic thing is I just completed a Living Will and Durable Power of Attorney using a template downloaded off a website hosted by my state, Ohio. Missouri [mo.gov] has one too. I suppose I should sue my State for 3x damages. I'm sure some of my tax money went into that bandwidth.
Do you hear the ROFOLing
A ROFOLing we go...
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Looks like the defense will have a very easy time with this case then.
Litigious bastards (Score:5, Insightful)
Lawyers dont like competition (Score:3)
Lawyers dont like competition and are very good at suing cause thats what they do. I just watched a great doco on the dodgy legal tactics going on in the states called 'hot coffee' based on the well known McDonnalds/coffee lawsuit. Very much worth a watch.
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What was the name of that documentary, and is it on Netflix?
Useless law suit... makes me wonder (Score:2)
Okay, so apparently some people read a law that might state that LegalZoom is an illegal service. So they have filed suit to claim their triple damanges bonus reward. I wonder -- did they get their filing papers from LegalZoom to do this? I think it would be more than a little amusing if this were the case.
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Web MD is next! (Score:2)
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If WebMD had a service where people reviewed someone symptoms, and those people turned out not to be Drs, then yes, suing WebMD would be the correct response for consumer protection.
This looks like one of the stories about a lawsuit that takes the most trivial interpetation and then whines about broken tort.
Paying software. (Score:2)
You're entitled to claim 3x the fees you paid a non-lawyer for legal services.
So... did they pay the software itself money? Did the software give any of the money to it's owners and creators (who might be lawyers) or did it keep it all for itself. And if so, what DID the software do with all that money?
Devil's Advocate (Score:2)
IANAL, but I play one on the Internet... ;) This makes sense, playing devil's advocate. Can I start up a website, make up documents for wills, divorce, etc. and have no legal background? Without an in-state attorney to produce the documents, I have no standing to say that they will be legal in that state.
I would hope that LegalZoom has an in-state lawyer actually verifying these documents.
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The founders (at least Robert Shapiro) are lawyers so there is at least some basis for these to be legit. I've used Legal Zoom in the past and it appears they do have lawyers, either in house or contracted, for each state but I can't speak from a position of authority on how their company is structured.
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You could go to your local library and dig up copies of local forms that have been used. With some cleverness on a computer you could remove people's names from the documents you find there and substitute blank spaces or (oooh!) variables that are substituted by some really spiffy software.
Then you would have what LegalZoom has done. Oh, you might want one lawyer that has looked over the whole mess and said it was OK. You didn't really think LegalZoom is more than a web site and a call center did you?
Template (Score:2)
Does LegalZoom have a template for filing class action lawsuits?
Occupational Licensure - Incumbent Wage Protection (Score:2)
Every occupation wants state-backed occupational licensure. They _tell_ you it is for reasons like
- only a licensed plumber has taken the rigorous training required to understand that you don't want to drink fecal matter
- only a licensed electrician has taken the rigorous training required to understand that you don't want to lick 2 or more live electrical conductors at once
- only a licensed pharmacist has taken the rigorous training required to understand that you do not take all of the pills in the bottl
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Every occupation wants state-backed occupational licensure. They _tell_ you it is for reasons like
- only a licensed plumber has taken the rigorous training required to understand that you don't want to drink fecal matter - only a licensed electrician has taken the rigorous training required to understand that you don't want to lick 2 or more live electrical conductors at once - only a licensed pharmacist has taken the rigorous training required to understand that you do not take all of the pills in the bottle at once -
While I agree that licensing laws protect wages, and in many cases are ridiculous - does it really matter if your barber is licensed? - there are also valid reason for licensing some professions
A license indicates a level of understanding of the basics of a profession - a plumber or electrician knows code and some of the reasons behind it so you get proper water seals and safe circuits installed. A pharmacists understands drug interactions and, assuming you use the same one, can catch incorrect prescription
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To argue that occupational licensure is incumbent wage protection is to ignore the fact that any qualified person can apply for and be issued a license.
Better yet you gave some crappy examples:
I would hire a licensed plumber or electrician because he is recognized by the state as being familiar with local codes pertaining to plumbing / electrical wiring.
I would use a licensed pharmacist because he is certified by the state to have the educational requirements to safely dispense medication to the public.
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You do know this was field by people who aren't lawyers, right?
"Occupational Licensure is incumbent protection. It's a racket, it drives up wages artificially, and I don't see that it has any impact at all on quality of services delivered."
that's just wrong. You might want to look at history a bit before looking so damn stupid. All those came about because of massive consumer ripoffs and fraud.
If you are correct, then other states wouldn't have change there laws to allow this service, or made exception for
There go word processors... (Score:2)
So this applies to any software used to write a legal document without license to practice law? What about the fat ass corporate lawyers who inevitably have their assistants or paralegals type up all of the documents, and then just put pen to paper and collect their fee? Any assistant who used Word, Notepad, TextEdit, whatever...would technically be guilty as well as the software they used?
This is some frivolous shit here...I hate lawyers.
Next up: medical advice (Score:2)
It is unethical for websites like WebMD to suggest that I take Benadryl for pollen allergies or Ibuprofen for a headache. How can they claim to be providing adequate medical advice? I should sue them for suggesting well-tested remedies to common conditions instead of requiring me to visit a doctor in person to receive identical recommendations.
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What if they claimed to have someone review your symptoms and that person wasn't a MD?
LegalZoom is a forms respository (Score:3)
As a forms respository, it serves some purpose. If you have a problem, say needed a simple will, you can find a form that will allow you to present your will in the proper style to be recognized by people who know what a will is supposed to look like and what it is supposed to contain. And if all you need really is a simple will, then you got what you needed at a really cheap price.
On the other hand, there is nobody to tell you when you cross the line from needing a simple will to needing something more complex. So you have a simple will and think everything is fine. The same problem comes with every other sort of form they offer. If the form they cough up is all you really need it is a great and cheap service. But there is no judgement about what else might be needed. For that some sort of creative thought or at least more than just a passing familiarity with the local laws is needed.
Sure, lawyers cost money and you can hope until your dying day that you never need one. But as many people have found out, when you need a lawyer the first criteria should not be cheap. If you already know enough to be able to tell when you need a lawyer vs. a form repository then LegalZoom is a great service - but there are free form repositories so you don't need to use LegalZoom to get a standard lease form. What LegalZoom really has is advertising which your local library (another form respository) doesn't have. If you listen to much radio (ugh!) you will hear endless ads for LegalZoom - but you never hear an ad for the library. In that way LegalZoom is far more effective at gathering your support than the library is.
Maybe libraries should start advertising?
Mo vs. FTC/DOJ (Score:2)
Redtail Guppies (Score:3)
Re:Yay! (Score:4, Insightful)
No kidding - the twits filing the suit admits they weren't harmed by the service and just wants to reclaim their fees x3. This definitely qualifies as a top ten all time frivolous class action suit.
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I disagree with that, they got lucky that they weren't harmed by it. They were still defrauded, assuming that LegalZoom did as alleged.
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I disagree with that, they got lucky that they weren't harmed by it. They were still defrauded, assuming that LegalZoom did as alleged.
Look, the only people being harmed in Missouri by Legalzoom are the lawyers who can't charge $200/hr (or whatever the rate is) to make a basic will or incorporation filing. I wouldn't be surprised if these defendants who weren't harmed are either lawyers themselves who want LZ to not to business in the state or they're stooges for said lawyers.
As long as they sue the software itself (Score:3)
Let me get this straight. These people are bringing suit because some software gave them legal advice?
So they are essentially taking the position that the software is an intelligent agent capable of giving advice.
So they are implicitly positioning the software as a legal person (the agent that gave the advice, presumably
by assessing input from the plaintiffs and making its own decisions about what advice to give.)
So they should be petitioning to sue the software itself. (And good luck collecting from it.)
Tr
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"So they are essentially taking the position that the software is an intelligent agent capable of giving advice."
Er. No. They're taking the position that whoever wrote the text the software prints out is an intelligent agent capable of giving advice.
Don't mistake the medium for the message. If I wrote my legal advice down and mailed it to you, would you say I was taking the position that paper is an intelligent agent capable of giving advice?
This stupid 'software isn't sentient!' excuse is the same one Goog
Re:As long as they sue the software itself (Score:5, Informative)
The precedent is this:
in 1978 the Missouri Supreme Court ... reviewed a case in which Missouri bar authorities sought to punish the sellers of a divorce kit that consisted of nothing but blank legal forms and instruction booklets for filling them out. The court ruled that merely marketing such materials did not amount to practicing law absent "personal advice as to legal remedies or the consequences of flowing therefrom."
A booklet instructing you how to fill out legal forms is not legal advice, according to that ruling. Neither then is software that instructs you on how to fill in the blanks on a computerized legal form.
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You mean they were lucky they were not harmed from advice received indirectly by an attorney? Hate to tell you this, but if this is illegal, so is most of the legal profession (as tons of legal advice is issued under "guidance of an attorney", which exactly what you get with the service). Additionally, I would be absolutely amazed if there isn't a disclaimer which basically states, if in doubt, contact an attorney. This service is not a replacement for an attorney. Typically these services double as a refe
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Re:Yay! (Score:5, Interesting)
No kidding - the twits filing the suit admits they weren't harmed by the service and just wants to reclaim their fees x3. This definitely qualifies as a top ten all time frivolous class action suit.
Actually I'd guess it's more a move by lawyers in Missouri to drive LZ out of the state by making it to expensive to do business there. For many attorneys, simple legal documents are there bread and butter and if people start using low-cost DIY sites the attorneys stand to lose money or will be forced to lower prices.
Attorneys have been good at fighting any move to introduce competition - years ago they fought over advertising and even now limit what can be said. They created the idea that law school, instead of the old apprentice system where you read the law under an experienced attorney, was needed to be admitted to the bar (although some states still allow you to take the bar without going to law school under certain circumstances).
Of course, what they are doing is not unique to the legal profession. I just wish engineers had been clever enough to figure out a way to do the same thing so that "Engineer" could only be used by a "real" engineer. Yes, there are P.E.s but in most engineering jobs a P.E. is just a fancy title, not a job requirement.
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Of course, what they are doing is not unique to the legal profession. I just wish engineers had been clever enough to figure out a way to do the same thing so that "Engineer" could only be used by a "real" engineer. Yes, there are P.E.s but in most engineering jobs a P.E. is just a fancy title, not a job requirement.
Canada guards the title engineer. You can't use "engineer" unless you're a P.Eng and you can't be a P.Eng unless you have a degree. Graduates from diploma mills are allowed to use the title "technician".
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Certain types of engineers are restricted titles (Civil Engineer for one). These "protected" titles require licensing from the state as you are taking on legal liability and responsibility for your work. Architects and Doctors fall into this same category.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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This is clearly lawyers trying protect their industry via the state legal system, and they may win...in which case LegalZoom may give Missouri the finger and bar Missourans from using the site, wh
Re:Haters gonna hate (Score:5, Insightful)
Something similar actually already happened here in Canada, rather ontario between the upper canada law society and non-registered legal experts who weren't paralegals but represented people in court for things like compensation claims, and so on. The law society argued that these people were practicing without a license, in turn the government passed a law making it so that they had to be at least paralegals. And in turn fell under the upper-canada law society, meaning that they now also had to pay yearly administration fees and so on.
It really wasn't about the quality of the people who were doing this. It was their desire to get everyone who was doing legal work all under their umbrella so they could milk money from them.
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No kidding. It's all a scam. It's like those big pharmaceutical companies. They're all in it to stop honest snake-oil peddlers from exposing the healthcare industry secrets and costing them millions.
Or... you know... maybe some pursuits require a minimal amount of preparation and licensing to show that you've managed at least that minimum less you do serious damage to someone's life by merit of fast talking alone.
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Agreed. Now that lawyers realize that they can be replaced with a script, they are pissed.
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Oh, or a pack of rabid hyenas.
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Agreed. Now that lawyers realize that they can be replaced with a script, they are pissed.
Script pissies.
--
It puts the law on your side; not on your back.
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What if there were a class action lawsuit against lawyers for charging outrageous rates to do something which can be accomplished by a individual following a script or template? Better yet, how about a class action against "Slip and Fall" lawyers for filing unnecessary cases and seeking exorbitant settlements leading to artificially high malpractice insurance, overly cautious doctors, and an inflated cost for healthcare?
Re:just sour grapes (Score:4, Funny)
Well put. Now all we need is lawyer...
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Two problems:
When you cross the dividing line between needing a form to fill in the blanks and when you need an actual lawyer isn't clearly spelled out by anyone. It is up to you (or your lawyer) to recognize it. Fail to recognize it and you end up on the short end. Now how often does that happen with a lease? Never. How often does it happen with a will? Not too often. How often does it happen with the purchase of a business? Lots and lots and lots.
Second problem with the slip-and-fall lawyers. Peo
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Yes, but this is hardly the correct solution. The correct solution would be to fix the system so that one can't just pay whatever one wants for attorneys even if the amount is grossly disproportionate to what the other side can afford.
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+1, informative.
I thought it was just something wrong on my end.
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STOP USING Chrome 12.0.742.112 OR SOME SHIT U NOOB!
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The Bar exists because without it anyone could claim to be a 'lawyer' a. That sued t happen and the fraud was incredible, but not nearly as incredible as the amount of people who lost because the person they went to didn't actually know the law.
Laws aren't magic. Anyone can learn what they are and how they work. However every case is nuanced, so interpetation applies to a specific case needs time to understand.
Many people do there own 'lawyerly' services.
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Don't be stupid.
Licensing as protected the consumer a great deal, and in many ways.
This case sin't about some online doc writer, it's about an online service that has non-lawyers review your documents under the guise that they are lawyers.
Whether or not they can do that and that they term 'customer care' is sufficient for their customers to understand they may not be lawyers is another issue.
They also have a serve where you do speak to a lawyer, and I will assume those people re actually licensed lawyers fo
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"LegalZoom is only a software tool."
No, it's not.
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Care to read the summary?