A Toolkit for Advancing Data-Driven Unauthorized Practice of Law Reform: Domestic Violence Advocate Case Study
The seven-question framework:
Question Three:
Will the service model require UPL reform?
DV advocates are experienced in the challenges and limitations of helping survivors without giving legal advice, and based on those limitations the expanded role they want to play to more effectively help DV survivors would likely require UPL reform.
Key findings:
Organization leadership and advocates view the distinction between legal information and legal advice as a gray area with abstract and impractical differences.
Advocates were varied in their views of how much support they can offer to survivors without giving legal advice; advocates tended to view providing pamphlets, providing forms, and connecting survivors to self-help resources as providing legal information.
DV advocates report high levels of interest in providing legal advice to survivors.
Organization leaders would support their advocates training to provide legal advice to survivors because they believe it would be valuable to their organization and the clients they serve.
Advocates are most motivated to add legal advice to their skillset by increasing their ability to help survivors.
Advocates also view authorization to provide legal advice as a way to increase their competency.
Some advocates cited reasons to think critically and intentionally about this regulatory change because they recognize that providing legal advice to survivors creates liability for the advocate and their host organization. This concern would be alleviated, however, through adequate training.
85.9% of advocates are extremely interested, very interested, or interested in training to give survivors legal advice.
DV advocates are extremely interested in providing legal advice to survivors. 62.5% of the advocates surveyed reported that they were extremely interested, and 17.3% responded that they were very interested in opportunities to expand their role to include limited-scope legal advice as a service to the survivors they work with. In total, 86% of advocates are between interested and extremely interested in providing this additional service to survivors. Only 5.6% of advocates were not interested at all.
Perspectives from the DV Service Community:
“I can’t even put into words how exciting that option [of giving legal advice] would be.”
“[legal advice is telling the survivor] what you put down on a form, where you file a form, how you file a form, which form you select, you know, what, what to do at all.”
“because resources are so limited, [allowing advocates to give legal advice] would obviously . . . expand access for people.”
“the biggest concern everyone always has, myself included, is the liability issues.”
We want to “be so very clear about what we could do and could not do.”
Advocates consistently describe the distinction between legal information and legal advice as “a really thin line; ”very gray and muddy;” “it’s so gray;” “gray and murky;” and “always a gray area no matter how much training you get.”
“I'd be able to immediately at the time of, you know, [the] court case, be able to, you know, with more certainty, say [] what's happening, or [] what could happen, or what [the survivor] could ask for.”
“at the end of the day, if you can help somebody and have additional training and be able to do that, why not do it?”
“I think the positive outcomes far outweigh any concerns.”