Uhm -- I should explain the name of this blog
/One reason why people retain (hire) legal professionals, such as lawyers and paralegals, is to get legal advice, but what does this mean?
People might need help to
- understand the range of options that are available to them in different situations
- ensure that they've complied with all the laws that pertain to a specific issue
- prepare documents
- navigate the civil and criminal court system
You get the point. Legal professionals might be asked to do numerous things, and the reason people pay them instead of tackling this work themselves is to get any of these types of things done properly. After all, you wouldn't pay someone to do these things for you improperly, would you?
To promote fairness, all legal professionals in Ontario must comply with various rules of professional conduct that, among other things, govern the legal professional's relationship to his or her clients. If a lawyer gives anyone legal advice, even without being paid for it, the recipient of the advice might believe that they have established a lawyer-client relationship where none exists. Maybe the advice was trivial and nothing bad would come of it, but the situation could very easily become a lot messier, especially if the advice was incorrect. This is just one example. Legal professionals are required to abide by many many rules. Even if these rules didn't exist, normally it would be rude to ask a legal professional for free advice. Do you work for people for free just because they ask you to?
So how can legal professionals talk about the law without giving legal advice? Oftentimes we use the concept of "legal information", which is general and not-specific to any individual's needs. When I teach my students I provide only legal information for educational purposes. If the content of one of my classes touched on a personal concern of one of my students, they would have to look elsewhere for legal advice. For example, in my corporate law class I explain the main ways that people can structure their for-profit businesses -- this is legal information -- but I would never tell a student what the best choice would be for his or her particular business -- that would be legal advice. It is my responsibility to ensure that my students understand that we have a teacher-student relationship and not a lawyer-client relationship.
You won't confuse this blog with legal advice, I'm sure, because it is called "THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE", and now you know why!