Legal Question in Business Law in New York

Re: Legal document preparation business

Unauthorized practice of law is prohibited by Section 478 of the Judicary Law (of New York State's Consolidated Laws).

(I believe that it is a misdemeanor).

Legal document preparation (of customers' legal documents) by an independent paralegal (or by other non-lawyers), seems to fall within a legal "grey area".

Legal document preparation websites (and/or stores) such as LegalZoom and We The People market their services subject to disclaimers and you might benefit by checking out the

disclaimers on their websites and then marketing your own document preaparation services subject to similar disclaimers: i.e., by clearly stating that you are not an attorney, that you do not render

legal services, that you do not offer legal oponions, and that no attorney-client relationship exists between you and any of your customers.Also, clearly define your services as limited to typing

assistance to customers who are preparing their own documents and to correcting and double-checking your customers' documents for grammar and for spelling, and to ensure consistent usage

of addresses and names.

Note also that there are federal law restrictions on advertiisements by non-lawyers who prepare bankruptcy documents: federal law prohibits the use of the word "legal" in a non-lawyer's

advertisement of bankruptcy document preaparation services. (One New York federal district court ruled that it is prohibited to even use the word "paralegal" in such advertisements.) The last

time I checked, violation oof this restriction resulted in a $500 fine.

Note also that one of the major legal document preparation businesses lost a major lawsuit in Florida foor the unauthorized practice of law, some years ago, and ended up paying $500,000.

I myself sometimes assist self-represented non-lawyers in preparing their cases by assisting them with legal research and writing.

When I do render such services, I usually render such services subject to such a disclaimer: that although I am an attorney, my rendition of such services does not constitute the practice of law, and

that there is no attorney-clinet relationship between myself and these customers

in these cases.

Perhaps we can work together on some projects, as long as it is clearly stated that any participation by myself in any such project does not rise to the practice of law (since a lawyer is prohibited

from working in partnership with a non-lawyer in the practice of law). (The proprietors of the Legal Zoom website are themselves lawyers, as was the proprietor of most of new Yrok's We The

People franchises a few years ago.)

If you are interested, or have further questions, then you can contact me via e-mail and/or telephone voice-mail, both of which you cxan access through my LawGuru ATTORNEY PROFILE link.

Re: Legal document preparation business -- additional info

Beacuse of limits on length of Law Guru answer, I was unable to incluude the following in my initial response:

For a more thorough review of how the law against unauthorized practice of law is applied, you might want to open a Lexis account (or a LexisOne account for free access to case law precedents for the last five years) and do New York State court searches on upl or and//or "unauthorized practice of law" and/or judiciary law 478 (and similar searches in the New York State Uniified Court system's website which also allows for free searches of recent years' New York State case law precedents).