Proposed unauthorized practice of law rule

An opinion piece in today's Star-Bulletin seems to ignore some of the amendments made since the first draft, but nevertheless makes some interesting points that are still relevant -

Several states have adopted similar restrictions but the Department of Justice's antitrust division and the Federal Trade Commission objected to a "model" provision considered by the American Bar Association. In a letter to the association, the agencies noted that "consumers generally benefit from lawyer-nonlawyer competition in the provision of certain services."

A letter to the Supreme Court by Jeffrey H.K. Sia, last year's Hawaii bar president, cites no harm in the way nonlawyers service clients in performing quasi-legal functions. Likewise, other states that have adopted such a restriction did so after providing "no factual evidence and little evaluation of how the ability of lay services had actually hurt consumers," the Justice Department and FTC stated in the letter to the ABA.