As we move into the next phase of the Covid 19 saga, we’re going to see a reprise of some of the worst of the 2008 crisis, including an uptick in unemployment, evictions and foreclosures. Following shortly thereafter will be a bunch of grifters offering credit repair, debt consolidation, and collection and foreclosure defense.

When I had the honor of being chief disciplinary counsel, one of my jobs was enforcing the unauthorized practice of law rules. It’s a tricky enterprise, as the unauthorized practice of law (UPL) regime is, in many ways, a vestige of a simpler time, when lawyers rarely practiced across county lines, instead of across state lines and nationally. Many UPL complaints are simply turf-protection by local lawyers trying to keep their competitors from neighboring states at bay. As the Ninth Circuit—where I was involved in a knotty UPL case a few years ago—noted, in a different case, courts cannot be “judicial luddites” and ignore the fact that law follows business, and business respects few geographic boundaries. These cases were far from my first priority.

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