The NYT's excellent Adam Liptak reports on this appalling UPL claim filed by the Cleveland Bar Association against a father who represented his autistic child in a suit to seek benefits from the Akron, Ohio school board. The father obtained concessions and $160,000. The bar association's complaint sought a $10,000 fine against him, legal fees, and a promise that he not assist other parents trying to represent their own children in similar cases. The association withdrew the complaint in the face of skepticism from the Ohio Supreme Court.
Technically, the complaint probably had a valid point. The father represented another--his autistic son--in a legal proceeding. But the father was the real party insofar as the economic side of the case was concerned (he would have to pay for special care if the district would not provide it), and it is wholly implausible that the bar association cares more for his son's welfare than he does. Parental affection should ameliorate to some degree concerns that parents would place their children at risk by going it alone where they did not have the skills to do so. And (absent evidence that the terms mentioned above were a sweet deal for the school board) the father's victory falsifies any claim that non-lawyers cannot effectively represent their children in such cases.
I think the case against licensing, and therefore against UPL suits, is overdetermined. As neither licensing nor UPL is likely to go away in the near future, however, the best we can hope for is a certain modesty in UPL enforcement, and a sense of humility about the notion that lawyers, simply by virtue of being lawyers, possess skills others do not. This complaint was neither modest nor humble. Shame on the Cleveland Bar Association; kudos to the Ohio Supreme Court.
DM