Paralegal favors
limited-practice licenses
I am following this article and
possible limited-practice licensing, being that I am a rare dying breed of independent
paralegal. I do work for and under a lawyer. I am also studying to take the
"baby bar" at the end of 2014 so that I can be a licensed lawyer. I enjoy
doing work for low-income families. I also belong to LinkedIn and there is a
large group following this possibility. We look forward to positive action.
Mary L. Bolt
Redwood City, Calif.
Limited
licenses have pitfalls
We
actually tried something similar: the paralegal program. I can’t
recall the number of clients who came to me after a paralegal prepared their paperwork
incorrectly and the client had to spend three times as much or more to have the
problem corrected. A limited-license program, I’m afraid, would result in
the same problem. People would hire the limited-licensed person at the
same fee they would pay a licensed attorney and, as a result, have a mess
requiring them to hire a licensed attorney to correct the poorly prepared work
based on misinformation. We really don’t need to create another program
which will draw further criticism to our profession. If we intend to
remain a profession, having semi-professionals is not the answer to providing legal
services to those who cannot or will not spend the money to hire a licensed
professional.
Helen
O. Page
Jackson,
Calif.
Attorney
warns against over-regulation of lawyers
The State
Bar president says California's
lawyers are not "members" of the bar but are merely licensees. I
think the president is correct and has cleared the air on that point. For
many years, I mistakenly believed that the State Bar was an association for
attorneys because the bar used to lobby for our protection in the
legislature.
The words
"member" and "membership" could be deceptive and certainly
should be removed from all bar materials and documents if the State Bar has no
members and licensee interests are secondary. In that respect, the "State
Bar of California" seems misnamed. "Department of Attorney
Control," or "Department of Client Protection and Revenge," or
other description would be more accurate. If it ever was our association, we
would have been asked to vote on what to call it.
Licenses
come with restrictions and directions to the licensee which may contradict the
constitutional right to counsel of one's choice whose advice to a client should
be free from government influence because government itself is often
the main adversary. The ability to revoke the license of one's adversary is a
terrific advantage.
One result
of over-regulation is that many clients no longer trust lawyers to keep secrets
or act in the client's best interests. Rather than enhance trust in the legal
profession, the opposite occurs as more regulations insert government policies
into the practice of law. Other professions creep in to fill the void, but
partial licensing of them is not a solution to the problem of over-regulation.
Over-regulation
chills the independence of the bar without offering any enforceable guarantee
of quality. A similar example is the strict licensing of drivers, yet thousands
of automobile accidents occur every year despite the attempted conversion of
the constitutional right to travel into a privilege granted by the state.
As the
Declaration of Independence advises, governing is not a right but a privilege.
California's state agencies and legislature need to read that document for
important clues on how not to govern.
Phillip
Reed
Carlsbad,
Calif.
Bar
needs to focus on the public interest, not the lawyers
I
have been a member of the bar for 40 years. I regard it as a worthless, self-congratulatory
bureaucracy of incompetents. It says without us, you lawyers would be regulated
by the Department of Consumer Affairs! Well, bring ’em on – we need a new
sheriff.
What the State Bar does do is pander to the shibboleths of political
correctness, and then bask in its own glory. “Pro bono practice” is one
of them. The actual cost of licensing is probably $100 a year, judging by other
states’ bar dues. Discipline always seeks to pick only the low hanging fruit –
consumers of consumers’ trust funds. The “underserved” would be better served
by a bar that did not insist on a monopoly in the practice of law, when so much
more could be done so much cheaper by people who handle all sorts of routine
transactions such as real estate agents, banks and yes, even notaries. (The
lawyers’ comments in Letters reinforce my view that lawyers want the monopoly,
the public be darned.) The one thing the people have going for them now is the
pervasive Internet – and with any luck, the lawyers will go the way of the
bookstores. And the bar’s Minimum Continuing Legal Education is a fraud on the
public and a racket by the providers. They devote themselves to extracting a
share of the lawyers’ monopoly rents that lawyers enjoy from preventing non-lawyers
from helping people.
Judges will want competent and honest advocates to appear before them, but they
can’t rely on the State Bar for that. Businesses will want sound counsel, but
the State Bar has little to with that. Any mere mortal caught up in litigation
has already lost a game – a game of very high stakes – that he or she did not
even know he or she was playing. The State Bar seems to have no interest in
alleviating this public and private misery.
If President Patrick Kelly is right that the bar is not
a trade association,
then it ought to do a better job in promoting the public interest as that is
understood by the public, not the bureaucrats and not the lawyers. I suspect
that the public's disdain for lawyers is nothing other than lawyers’ reaping
what they have sown.
Bart Lee
San Francisco
California Bar Journal letters must include
full name with a daytime telephone number
and complete address. Send letters to
cbj@calbar.ca.gov.