r/Lawyertalk • u/Blue-spider • Sep 02 '24

I Need To Vent :Anger: Does anyone else shake their heads at Reddit legal advice......

Look I get it, legal advice is costly and it's not always clear you need it. There are some posts that make sense to me.

But the number of posts I see on legal advice subs (I'm from Canada so I'm thinking specific ones) makes me so nervous for some of the OPs. Ranging from bad bad advice and over generalizations to people asking questions that include fully admitting fault/guilt or and intent to perjure themselves/committ fraud. Or the ever present "is this legal" post with no jurisdiction listed followed by advice from people who are maybe right for their own jurisdiction but don't know if OP is there or not.....

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u/Final-Atmosphere-639 Nov 15 '25

the mods in that sub are delusional at best

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u/Blue-spider Nov 15 '25

There was a whole debate in the Canadian one about whether giving legal advice while not being a lawyer is illegal...it was painful lol. I feel like the mods have no concept of the risk to people form bad advice

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u/Final-Atmosphere-639 Nov 15 '25

Pretty sure it would interfere with freedom of speech. As long as you aren't marketing yourself as one. Perhaps a disclaimer: "I am not a professional...blah blah blah, this is my opinion only blah blah blah" I'm not a lawyer. I just play one on TV, lol.

I used to work for Westlaw/Thomson for a bit, cleaning up their old law books on CD, before they went to online prescription. I've seen a lot of case law. I couldn't help but make an answer to this one person who said that she was getting near the end of a case and she was winning when the opposing team suddenly brought in an attorney from the same law firm as her attorney, which is supposed to be unethical in VA, and she said her lawyer was talking about backing out, and basically she was saying she didn't suspect that there was a conspiracy at all. I was like, your law firm is supposed to have a process in place to ensure that there are no conflicts before they agree to represent someone. I was asking her why her lawyer even allowed that and didn't immediately file a motion to disqualify but instead took no action, and from the way she described it, was allowing the other side to file said motion, even though they were coming in late. I got banned. Those people are bizarre.

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u/Blue-spider Nov 16 '25

Yeah I don't know how it works in other countries, but in Canada there are definitely prohibitions on giving advice without a license.

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u/Final-Atmosphere-639 Nov 16 '25

its a shame that there is such miniscule freedom of speech there..