State Bar of Wisconsin

Legal Services Consumer Protection Act Offers Needed Safeguards

Tom Basting, President
State Bar of Wisconsin

Wisconsin residents seeking legal services will gain additional consumer safeguards if a petition proposed by the State Bar of Wisconsin is adopted by the State Supreme Court. The initiative, called the Legal Services Consumer Protection Act, responds to a directive issued by the Court two years ago asking the Bar to document the consumer impact of unqualified individuals practicing law and to recommend changes.

The petition offers dozens of examples of instances where Wisconsin consumers have been hurt when people without proper training or oversight attempt to practice law. These include:

• An individual who collected substantial fees from the families of incarcerated convicts for wholly ineffective legal documents that would purportedly result in the prisoner’s early release;
• Immigration advisors who provide incomplete and improper legal advice to aliens residing in Wisconsin that exposes them to the loss of legal jobs and potential deportation;
• A surveyor who drafted a document that erroneously created an unauthorized easement and encumbrance that imposed substantial costs on a third party; and
• An individual who charged outrageous fees for canned revocable trusts that failed to achieve a primary goal of such an arrangement – avoiding probate.

People can get hurt when individuals without proper training or oversight handle their legal matters and we need to do a better job of protecting consumers against bad advice that can result in lost money, lost opportunities, or lost rights.

The petition asks the Court, which has jurisdiction over the practice of law in the state, to take two actions: 1) Adopt a new rule to clearly define the what constitutes the “practice of law” for consumer protection purposes; and, 2) Create an administrative system to enforce the new rule.

The petition notes that in recent years twenty-five other states and the District of Columbia have adopted rules or statutes similar to those proposed in the petition for Wisconsin: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming and the District of Columbia.

Like these other states, Wisconsin has experienced what amounts to “legal mission creep” as more people seek to offer legal services, sometimes for altruistic reasons and other times for private gain, but often at the expense of consumers. Wisconsin already enforces professional standards for nursing, accounting, landscape architecture and many other professions. Yet while the Court has adopted rules regulating who can practice law in Wisconsin, no clear definition of what constitutes the practice of law is spelled out. This proposed rule, which is modeled after similar initiatives successfully implemented in other states, would resolve this ambiguity and create a Legal Services Office of Consumer Protection to allow civil remedies when violations occur.

• Read the petition 430 KB
  • Exhibit A 240 KB
  • Exhibit B 4.4 MB
  • Exhibit C 2.3 MB
• Executive Summary 1.1 MB
• The Unauthorized Practice of Law: Court Tells Profession, Show Us the Harm, Wisconsin Lawyer, October 2005
• 2006-07 Unauthorized Practice of Law Policy Committee Roster 40 KB