united-states lawyer oregon unlicensed-practice legal-advice
Can a client share legal advice from a lawyer?
<p>Alice, Bob, and Chris have a conversation about doing XYZ, and the question of legality comes up --- none of them know whether or not XYZing is legal. Alice hires a lawyer and asks him; he says yes, it is legal to XYZ.</p>
<ol>
<li>How can Alice share this information (that the lawyer said, &quot;yes, it is legal to XYZ&quot;) with Bob and Chris without practicing law herself?</li>
<li>If the lawyer is wrong, and XYZing is actually illegal, is Alice responsible for Bob's and Chris's XYZing? Can they sue her?</li>
</ol>
<p>In this case, Alice and the lawyer are in Oregon, but Bob and Chris are in other US states. It is a federal legal issue.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>Can a client share legal advice from a lawyer?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yes. In fact, by default a client is entitled to waive his attorney-client privilege. That means that the client may disclose the entire communications between the client and the lawyer rather than just the legal advice. It would be make no sense to outlaw the disclosure of lawyer's advice but not the full disclosure that the client's waiver enables.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How can Alice share this information with Bob and Chris without practicing law herself?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In any way short of misrepresenting, explicitly or otherwise, to Bob and Chris that Alice is licensed to practice law. In the absence of akin misrepresentations, Bob and Chris are not entitled to presume they have an attorney-client relation with Alice.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If the lawyer is wrong, and XYZing is actually illegal, is Alice responsible for Bob's and Chris's XYZing? Can they sue her?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It depends. First, it is unclear that the parties engaged in &quot;XYZing&quot; and whether it had any legal consequences, such as prosecution or losses.</p>
<p>Second, the nature of the relation between the parties determines whether Alice had a sort of fiduciary duty toward Bob and Chris.</p>
<p>Third, Bob and Chris need to satisfy the element of <em>reasonable reliance</em> even if Alice were their lawyer. Case in point: Someone's lawyer can advise to literally jump from a skyscraper to the concrete, but no reasonable person would rely on that advice.</p>
