Illegal legal advice: Kudos to Upsolve for fighting to provide debt-collection advice
A New York nonprofit, Upsolve, started out helping automate the bankruptcy process for low-income Americans. Then it stumbled into a related problem: Many of the families it served were on the receiving end of a barrage of intimidating letters, calls and lawsuits from debt collectors insisting they owed boatloads. Knowing that many of these mistake-riddled cases would have been easy to dismiss if only their clients had been able to afford lawyers, Upsolve sought to offer a helping hand, in the form of free legal advice.
That’s when they ran head-first into state statutes that make it a felony, punishable by up to four years in prison, to engage in the unauthorized practice of law.
Now, with the help of fully credentialed attorneys, they are challenging that law in Manhattan federal court. Tuesday, they scored an early victory, as Judge Paul Crotty granted Upsolve’s motion for a preliminary injunction, ruling on First Amendment grounds that the state cannot enforce its prohibition against the free advice program.
It’s critical to understand here that the nonprofit’s volunteer advocates never sought to masquerade as attorneys, write contracts or negotiate plea bargains. They only wanted to give people some basic guidance on how to fill out multiple-choice DIY forms designed by the state that aim to make it relatively easy for people to defend themselves.
Just as your neighbor can offer an opinion on a drug or a surgical procedure without being punished for being unlicensed pharmacist or doctor, it’s terribly wrong for New York to forbid people from helping one another navigate a complicated process. Legal jargon is a foreign language to laypeople, and lots of folks have good reason to suspect it’s designed that way to keep lawyers in business. Making it a felony to offer a little help here and there only confirms those suspicions of the insider-protection racket. Professional licenses have a vital role to play in an economy where consumers are well protected, but they can’t give one and only one narrow class of professionals a voice.
