Careful to figure out the legal situation particular to such a case, careful about which case to take on in the first place. And of course careful not to give the game away by being too clever by half.
I'm reminded of a friend I had way back in my teens. He started driving on public roads when he was about 14, purchased his first car just after his 15th birthday. A big old Ford Customline V8, beautiful thing in its own way. Of course he wasn't eligible for a drivers licence (min. eligibility 17 years of age) or even a learners licence. But he drove that big old petrol guzzler everywhere for years without ever being stopped by police. He was a careful driver, the very model road user. Courteous, law abiding etc, never had any kind of accident.
Until just after he turned 17 and obtained his licence. Needless to say, the beautiful old veteran Customline was written off quite soon after that anniversary. He no longer felt the need to be so careful after that you see. Experience and skill wasn't the issue, experience and skill isn't everything. Motivation counts for a lot more sometimes.
Just as you were a lot safer as a passenger in that Customline before my young mate got his license, I strongly suspect you would be much safer travelling with the unlicensed lawyer than you would be with the average genuine article. (Present company excepted of course.)
More so, given that a licensed lawyer usually walks away from a horrendous legal crash that wipes out his client without a scratch.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
At 6:32 AM -0700 27/3/07, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>Yeah, there's no harm done, you just cause your
>clients to lose their money or their freedom. There is
>no physical harm, the physical harm might have been
>done by the defendants, by what do you care if the
>clients don't recover as long as you get your jollies?
>All jolly good fun.
>
>All law is bullshit anyway, there is no real knowledge
>or skill involved, just "pretensions of professional
>speech and manner,
>> employing wikipedia and
>> half-remembered old episodes of Night Court" are
>enough to do what lawyers do. And naturally law
>professors impart no actual information or skill, just
>teach student how to bullshit in the appropriately
>impressive manner. The biggest scams are the big law
>firms who pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to
>associates when after all any glib talking scamster in
>a suit could do what they do.
>
>FYI the not-a-lawyer guy in Chicago had completed all
>but one course of a University of Michigan law degree.
>Lacking that course, I think it was professional
>responsibility (legal ethics) he did not graduate.
>
>People did use to practice without going to law
>school, but they apprenticed themselves to practicing
>lawyers for years and had to be admitted to the bar.
>
>--- Jim Straub <rustbeltjacobin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Of all the crimes I hope one day to commit,
>> "Practicing Law Without A
>> License" sounds perhaps the most fun and jovial. A
>> real Falstaff's con. I
>> mean, pretending to be a doctor or a nurse, that's
>> no fun, you just wind up
>> harming random people physically. But procuring a
>> nice suit, adopting the
>> pretensions of professional speech and manner,
>> employing wikipedia and
>> half-remembered old episodes of Night Court to get
>> one through faking a
>> couple months worth of motions filed and briefs
>> cribbed, before arousing
>> more and more suspicions and eventually having to
>> excuse oneself from the
>> legal profession out your firms bathroom window one
>> day when you overhear
>> the partners calling the law school you listed
>> yourself summa cum laude just
>> to check up on that strange new fellow... oh to have
>> never gotten into
> > politics, and just become a con artist...