The first entry of the Donald Roberts Law blog will address what I call “Facebook Lawyering.” This is the term I have given for people who post, or share the post of someone else’s, legal advice regarding things such as planning for death, your rights when being pulled over, starting a business, different types of real estate deeds, and several other things. I do not always think the people who do this are bad people, although I have seen one or two that can only indicate a person is being recklessly ignorant at best. But laws often change from year to year, so it is always important to know the date that any legal advice is given because it may have been true at one time but has changed significantly since. Also, every state has many variances in their laws and some of these variances can be quite significant, so it is important to know if the advice you’re reading as you scroll through Facebook even applies to the state you live in; laws can even change from county to county and city to city. And probably, the most worrying issue with Facebook Lawyering is that every legal case, no matter how similar the circumstances might be to another case, has some difference that may cause a completely different outcome in the former case from the latter.
Facebook Lawyering is usually the result of someone trying to give people advice because they read something or heard something from a lawyer and they want to spread the news. This may be because they found it interesting and wanted to share, but there is a good reason why most states require attorneys to attend three years of law school on top of the four years of undergraduate college. That is not to say you must be a lawyer to know anything about the law, but would you rather get plumbing advice from a trained plumber or someone who had a conversation with a plumber last week over a few beers? Would you rather get medical advice from a doctor or someone who read an article last week about how garlic bread may be causing your headaches? It’s perfectly fine to talk with friends about some legal news you read about, but if you are having a real legal problem or even think you might have a problem, talk to an attorney to make sure. If you do have a problem, you can be more confident that the attorney knows what he or she is talking about. Donald Roberts Law, LLC practices in a wide variety of legal areas and we are always happy to help.