This post was inspired by this recent story in the ABA Journal: Alabama Bar Group Files Suit to Ban Legal Zoom.

I meet people every day who need corporate legal counsel. Often they think can’t afford it. They may think they have no choice but to spend a smaller sum of money on forms from a site like Legal Zoom.

What they’re not thinking about is that Legal Zoom and others of their ilk are not lawyers. Many like Legal Zoom are essentially proprietary search engines with a non-lawyer front end and a database of forms and laws on the back end.

Everybody likes to argue about whether this is the “unauthorized practice of law.” But I’d like to focus on something less technical.

If a licensed lawyer did over the phone what Legal Zoom does over the web, that lawyer would be punished by state authorities for not providing competent legal representation. Every state has some equivalent to Model Rule 1.1:

"A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation."

I’d like you to imagine calling a lawyer for advice, but having the lawyer only ask you the same questions as he asks everybody. Imagine that when you ask for clarification, he ignores you. This isn’t competence. It actually seems kind of mean.

The conclusion is that Legal Zoom might be practicing law illegally, but even if it were a lawyer, it would be punished for incompetence.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to read a copy of Waiting for Godot translated by Google.