For most licensed attorneys, the question of when someone is or must be, licensed to practice law isn’t something you give much thought to. You, as an attorney, are licensed, so there is nothing to worry about, right?
Allow our Chicago ARDC defense lawyer at Ellis Legal to delve further into this topic below.
Getting Into Trouble
One way that validly licensed attorneys wind up in legal trouble is that they have staff, or paralegals, who are working for them and practicing law, often inadvertently. And when you, as a licensed attorney, allow someone working under you to practice law who is not licensed, you can be the one facing discipline by the ARDC.
That includes not just paralegals or legal assistants but any attorney whose license is suspended or who may be awaiting admission into the Illinois bar.
What is Practicing Law?
It can be hard to determine what is or what is not practicing law—or where the boundary lies between just giving advice or assisting someone and actually being a lawyer practicing law. As a general, albeit not always a helpful rule of thumb, many courts have defined the practice of law as rendering any service that requires the use or any degree of legal knowledge.
That can sound circular or tautological. But as a general rule, you may want to ask yourself whether something someone is saying is something they would need a law school education to say. If so, it’s practicing law–and someone does not need to go to court or even file anything with a court in any case to be practicing law.
Form Preparers
So, for example, assisting someone in filling out a form would not be the practice of law. Explaining to them the legal implications or consequences of their actions while filling out that form could be the practice of law.
This is the way that many companies that help people fill out divorce or family law forms, or bankruptcy forms get away with doing so: they say that they are just helping people “fill in the blanks” of forms, but they are not explaining the legal ramifications of the answers people put down, nor are they helping people strategize what the best answers would be (at least, that’s what many of these services say).
In reality, many people or services who offer to “fill out forms” (often with the promise of affordable services) are actually practicing law illegally. In many cases, there is simply no way to separate the filling out of legal forms from practicing law. Even just telling you which form to use or what response to select on a form is practicing law.
Paralegals and Legal Assistants
Paralegals are a gray area. They can, on the one hand, convey legal information you instruct them to convey to clients.
They cannot, however, give their own advice or answer legal questions from clients without conferring with a supervising attorney. In Illinois, there must be a supervising attorney; paralegals are not allowed to work independently of a licensed attorney.
Do you have an ARDC problem or legal issue? Speak with a Chicago business and legal ethics litigation attorney at Ellis Legal at (312) 967-7629 today.