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Contemplations on ‘An Act to Further Define … ‘Practice [of] Law’,’ ‘Requirements for Web Site Providers’ and Chapter 84 of the North Carolina General Statutes

Osborne,GrantBy Grant B. Osborne

Ulysses Everett McGill (previously imprisoned for practicing law without a license and about to be hanged):  “It ain’t the law!”

Sheriff Cooley:  “The law? The law is a human institution.”

— “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2001)

How much time have you spent reading Chapter 84 of the North Carolina General Statutes on “Attorneys-at-Law”? Probably not much, which is a little surprising considering that it defines what it means to engage in the “practice [of] law” in North Carolina and regulates what we do for a living. Most attorneys in North Carolina (including your humble author until he wrote this) have probably spent more time monitoring updates on LinkedIn and Facebook than they have engaging in study of the statutes that, until recently, gave us in North Carolina a virtual monopoly over the rendition of legal services. The General Assembly and our Governor, however, have recently amended what it means to engage in the “practice [of] law.” Those amendments warrant attention.

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