I am sure that pretty much everyone reading this article has friends on Facebook who love to talk about policy matters and legal issues. In this day and age, it is very common for people to provide hot takes about legal matters, even if they have no experience or training with the legal issue that is being discussed. While it is fine for people to discuss policy matters online and talk about what the law should be, it is increasingly common to see nonlawyers assert some kind of comprehensive knowledge of legal issues in conversations and in their social media posts.
This happens at least a few times a week in my own life, and I’m often left scratching my head wondering why someone with no legal background would comment on complex legal matters. For instance, I recently saw one person I know discussing the Affordable Care Act, and the requirement to purchase health insurance. This individual suggested that if the government can force people to purchase health insurance, they could just as easily compel individuals to buy bibles. Needless to say, this person must’ve missed the class on the Establishment Clause at the law school they never attended, and there are a number of issues with this supposedly rational analogy.
In addition, every now and then, one of my friends posts one of those bogus legal notices about revoking any consent to have their pictures or content harvested by other companies, and suggest that others do the same. You know the notices I’m talking about, like the one that purports to cite to the Berne Convention, but most people just pasted the fake notice with a typo that reads “Bern Convention” (which shows that most people didn’t even Google what they were referencing!). In any case, editors on this website and others have already discussed how these notices have little legal effect, and this shows how nonlawyers oftentimes assert an understanding of legal issues without any prior training or experience.
Of course, practitioners of nearly every profession can gripe that individuals untrained in that field assert an understanding of matters without any basis for doing so. For instance, my doctor friends tell me all of the time how patients often look up symptoms on WebMD and think they understand more about their condition than their own doctors. In addition, accountants and financial planners also have to deal with untrained people searching for advice online and purporting to know more about a topic than a trained practitioner. However, you rarely see an untrained person making a hot take about medicine or finance on social media, and the legal profession is perhaps most subject to people purporting to know about issues related to our field.
One reason for this phenomenon might be that people oftentimes confuse law and policy, as the two are interrelated in a number of contexts. It is fine for people to assert how they think the law should be. For instance, it is perfectly acceptable for anyone to opine about whether an act should or shouldn’t be protected by the First Amendment.
However, a line is definitely crossed when untrained people express an opinion about whether something is illegal or legal, or is protected by the Constitution or not. Sometimes, individuals without legal training will assert that they understand that free speech is protected or that searches and seizures can be prohibited, and apply a given situation to this broad understanding. However, every lawyer knows there are numerous tests, standards, and other rules that govern assessments about Constitutional law and other legal matters. As a result, it is frustrating when untrained people make these shaky determinations based on nothing more than a broad understanding of the law.
Another reason why nonlawyers often think they are legal experts is because it is easy to analogize one set of facts to a situation in their own lives or a legal matter that is in the news. For instance, I once had a friend who tried to explain to me how streaming pirated content online could not make you liable under the law. He had this long-winded explanation about how he could stand outside a TV store and look at the programs on the TVs through the window with impunity. Somehow, my friend was trying to analogize this situation to streaming content, since you are not quite downloading the material, so there could be no copyright issue or other legal problem.
Of course, there are a number of flaws to this brilliant legal theory, and even a basic understanding of copyright law and other legal subjects would have informed my friend about how his reasoning was flawed. However, it is easy enough to just make an argument from a broad understanding of concepts and life experience. Few people stop to think about how their reasoning might be changed by legal standards that govern a given legal issue.
All told, with the rise of social media and the increased availability of information about the law, more and more nonlawyers seem to be feigning an understanding of legal matters. This is not unlike the phenomenon experienced in other professions where people untrained in those fields claim knowledge about certain matters. However, the legal industry is perhaps most prone to untrained individuals claiming knowledge about our field, and people should recognize that certain opinions can only soundly be made by legal professionals.
Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.