Thinking More Deeply About Treating Nonlawyers Who Offer Medicaid and Estate Planning as Engaging in UPL
Earlier this week, we reported on the Florida Supreme Court’s recent Advisory Opinion regarding activities by nonlawyers in “Medicaid Planning” that will be treated as Unlicensed Practice of Law (UPL).
That piece triggered several discussions with colleagues, and thus we have more information to share.
Stanford Law Professor Deborah Rhode, working with Lucy Buford Ricca, the Executive Director of Stanford’s Center on the Legal Profession, has a relatively new article in Fordham Law Review’s annual colloquium issue that deepens Rhodes’ long-standing concerns about the potential impact of treating certain “nonlawyer” conduct as sanctionable under state UPL rules. In “Protecting the Profession or the Public? Rethinking Unauthorized-Practice Enforcement,” Professor Rhode begins with the history behind her earliest examination of the utility of “do it yourself kits” in areas of underserved legal needs, such as divorce. In her most recent Fordham piece, she also builds upon her 1981 survey of UPL enforcement procedures across the 50 states, by making a close examination of over 100 reported UPL decisions issued in the last decade. Rhode and Ricca conclude that UPL enforcement needs to be more consumer-oriented and less driven by narrow interests of lawyers in protection of specialized practice. They advocate that a “more consumer-oriented approach would also vest enforcement authority in a more disinterested body than the organized bar.” Their article is a must read for any Bar group considering UPL issues, including those arising in the elder law or estate planning context.
Along that same line, the American Bar Association is hosting its second “UPL School” in Chicago on April 17-18. The purpose is to provide “a central forum for volunteer members of state and local bar UPL committees and commissions, and those charged with the prevention and prosecution of UPL violations to discuss current UPL challenges.” (The first such “ABA UPL School” was held in 2013, focusing on several areas including immigration, “notario” fraud, and mortgage relief or loan modification vendors.)