Legal Zoom Challenged by North Carolina Bar on UPL Grounds
Legal Zoom has been challenged by the North Carolina which claims that Legal Zoom is violating the unauthorized practice of law statute in North Carolina. The essence of the Bar's complaint is that even though Legal Zoom asserts that their legal documents are created by a web-based software system this constitutes the practice of law because Legal Zoom selects the content that is incorporated into the system. The Unauthorized Committee of the Bar cites In re Reynoso, 477 F.3d 1117 (9th Cir. 2007) , a case that was decided by a Federal court in California on a different set of facts. In fact, in the case of Legal Zoom, a paralegal or legal technician, conducts something called a "review" , which Legal Zoom uses as a rationale to charge a higher fee. This review is not supposed to be "legal advice", but apparently this gives the North Bar UPL Committee problems as well. We think the In re Reynoso decision is limited to the particular facts of that case, which the Court notes, so for the North Carolina UPL Committee to cite this as precedent, we think is a bit of a stretch. We also that in California that are many non-lawyer providers who provide alternatives to lawyers, including Legal Zoom itself, which is based in Hollywood, California, and they are not being hounded by the bar in their home jurisdiction.
This is an ominous development as it indicates that the organized bar will go to any length to maintain its monopoly over the delivery of legal services, even redefining what is essentially a "legal information service" as a the practice of law between a client and an attorney. The legislature of the State of Texas was faced with a similar situation several years ago, when the Bar was trying to shut down a legal software publisher on the theory that the purchase of a legal software program from Staples was the practice of law, and responded by passing a statute in response to consumer demand that exempted legal software programs as falling within the definition of the practice of law.
This is not an issue that will stir North Carolina's citizens to rise up in anger at the organized bar for restricting their choices and keeping legal fees unnecessarily excessive, but they should. They should follow the path of Texas's citizen's and put the North Carolina bar in its place.
