legal-terms
Do the words &quot;take advice&quot; / &quot;taken advice&quot; imply the advisor is a lawyer?
<p>As per the title, I am (as a non-lawyer) helping someone in a dispute where fraud has occurred.</p>
<p>If I'm helping the person write a letter to one of the involved parties based on my advice, if I help her produce a letter which says she has &quot;taken advice&quot; (and I am the one advising her), would this be construed as a claim she has received advice specifically from a lawyer?</p>
<p>Put another way, if someone claims to have &quot;taken advice&quot;, and the advice they received was from a non-lawyer, is the claim misleading?</p>

<blockquote>
<p>if someone claims to have &quot;taken advice&quot;, and the advice they received was from a non-lawyer, is the claim misleading?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No. The language &quot;<em>taken advice</em>&quot; does not imply &quot;<em>taken legal advice</em>&quot;, let alone one arising from an attorney-client relation or taken from someone purporting to be a lawyer.</p>
<p>The language &quot;<em>taken advice</em>&quot; in and of itself leaves the advisor's capacity unspecified. For instance, the non-lawyer might be an accountant whose advice goes beyond a lawyer's scope or expertise.</p>
<p>That being said, it is unclear whether adding that expression is useful at all.</p>

<p>I belive that in British English, and other versions of English derived from BrE, &quot;to have taken advice&quot; usually means to have obtained a formal professional opinion, often from a lawyer, but it could be from an accountant, an architect, or any other sort of professional.</p>
<p>To use such a phrase in a business letter might well imply having obtained a professional opinion of some sort, and be misleading if the advice was casual or personal instead of professional.  Even if the phrase was misleading, that might not be a legal issue, depending on the circumstances of the letter.</p>
<p>If the issue is a specifically legal one, any professional advice would most likely be legal advice, and <strong>in that case</strong> that would be the implication of the phrase, I would think.</p>
