Posted on 10/15/2014 11:34:23 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Competition – everyone loves it, except when it’s competition in your particular business or profession. Then it’s dangerous and must be controlled if not eliminated.
Back in August, I wrote about the North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners case, which involves the legality of efforts by that body to stop anyone who is not a licensed dentist from offering teeth whitening services. Upon digging further into the case, I learned that it has spawned a raging battle among legal groups, with four state bar associations weighing in on an amicus brief. They evidently fear that if the decision goes against the Board of Dental Examiners, that might undermine their ability to stifle competition in the market for legal help.
Opposing them is a brief submitted by Responsive Law, LegalZoom, and other self-help entities, backed by thirteen law professors. That brief turns over a rock and lets sunlight shine on nefarious anticompetitive doings.
First, however, what is the connection between the North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners and the state bar associations (including the North Carolina bar)?
The common thread is that they are private organizations wielding governmental power (or what at least looks like governmental power) to prevent competition, without actually having been authorized by the public to act in that manner. If the Supreme Court rules that the Board of Dental Examiners is not above antitrust law when it tries to keep the teeth whitening business exclusively for dentists, then it might rule the same way about bar associations and their similar activities. That has them worried.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
I know a guy who had someone else type up a Legal Zoom will for him. The guy who typed it was in it for about 33% of the estate.
In California there is a presumption that a person who drafted a will and was also the beneficiary was using undue influence.
An attorney could have told the guy that drafted it that he needed a “Certificate of Independent Review” — a document by an independent attorney attesting that the drafting was on the up-and-up. This would have been sufficient to overcome the presumption of undue influence, or at least close enough to scare off challenges to the will.
That was not done.
The Will also LACKED a no-contest provision.
The attorney for the drafter tried to say “My client did not draft the Will. Legal Zoom drafted the Will.” That argument did not get tested. The case settled with the drafter receiving about half of what he would have received if not for these two mistakes.
Bar Associations are insidious. Control over most of them has been seized by liberal, activist lawyers with financial support from the trial lawyers. They are gatherings of the most liberal people in a state like mine (Kansas) outside of university faculty clubs.
They have assumed quasi government roles in selecting or vetting judges. Here in Kansas the bar association provides fully half of a commission that recommends Supreme Court justices to the Governor. The Governor must select from that list. They are also influence on the selection of other judges and are fighting to eliminate the election of judges which will ensure a solidly left wing judiciary who will be more powerful than the legislature.
Lawyers, dentist’s realtors, etc are guilds. Archaic market entities fixing prices and regulating their industry to serve themselves.
Because the Legal Profession is a Monopoly that is enforced by the “Bar Association”....
The Bar Association should have been “Trust Busted” a very DAMNED LONG time AGO!
[ Legalzoom.com is great if all you need is very general info. ]
Someone needs to get together a group of “Honest” Lawyers and create a conmpeting “Bar”
You know like how AMAC was created to counter AARP...
““now now, I know you really meant this, not what you wrote, why don’t you go back and rewrite this and come back next Thursday?””
Yeah, because in the estate field, the guy who knew what he meant, and could explain it, is dead.
Frankly, I think I’d like to be judged by a computer.
As a matter of fact, how many of this Country’s problems would disappear if we just replaced nearly all of the lower courts with automated systems and relegate the ‘lawyers’ to only cases in higher courts...
Eh...fantasy over.
Even if he/she is/was not dead....they have may have transitioned from mentally competent to mentally incompetent (in the case of where you discover an error in the trust/will/estate and go try to change it) Maybe nobody read the will real closely before then....suddenly, on a close read, you discover something hinky.
That will cost you about $25K-$35K to have a conservator appointed. And they damn well know that you are completely stuck without them and will charge accordingly.
And I will add yet another aspect, one among many where amateurs simply do not have the experience to arrive at what will prove to be very, very obvious conclusions-——AFTER the damage has been done. And these situations typically have very large financial impacts, sometimes devastating.
Anyone who performs work on behalf of an estate administrator knows with perfect certainty that if YOU identify yourself as the admin, as you surely will, then whatever THEY charge comes out of the estate; meaning it is not YOUR money. NEVERTHELESS, they equally well understand that you get NONE of the estate money until they work their voodoo.
That means that they can charge whatever the hell they want to and you are in essence completely powerless to do very much about it. You want to get snippy with them? They will withhold their work product and you’ll just have to buy it again. Or they will file a lien on the estate.
Do you know this going in? No, you don’t. You are a naif. You think either someone is out to charge their normal fee, which is fine, or to help you out of a bad situation out of sympathy. Neither of those is true.
No Zoom for you!
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