What is legal advice?

A lawyer will give you legal advice based on your particular circumstances.

A lawyer may use a variety of resources to provide legal advice.

Their formal legal education, both before- and after admission.
Their experience in dealing with similar issues;
Primary sources of information include relevant statutes and cases.

You can get specialized advice from professionals within and outside the profession (e.g. more specialised lawyers) or without it (e.g. accountants and other complementary occupations).

Bad legal advice can have devastating consequences. Bad legal advice can lead to people being sent to jail or even losing large sums of money. As a matter law, lawyers cannot provide this information.

A second reason lawyers cannot give legal advice is the requirement that they have professional indemnity insurance. This protects you against any lawyer’s negligence.

You could be charged with a crime if you give legal advice to another person, even if you’re not a lawyer.

However, there is nothing that will stop you from giving legal advice to others. For example, you could rely on legal information for free without having to pay for it. Be aware that the information that you are relying upon might not be accurate and that you may not have considered all relevant considerations. If you make a mistake, you will not have insurance.

What information do you require?

Although legal information is available for free, it is not always reliable. However, legal advice can be reliable provided it is given by a qualified person.

How do you determine if legal advice is worth the cost?

Here’s how:

Consider what is at stake. It is easier to justify hiring a lawyer if you have more at risk. You might not know the extent of your risk or how you can manage it without consulting a lawyer.

It is important to understand the role of a lawyer. You can find out more about the work of construction lawyers.

Consider what you actually need. There are many ways to control your legal spending. The cost of a contract review is one example. It all depends on how detailed you need it to be.

Talk to the lawyer that you are interested in engaging. This will help you to determine if you are likely to receive helpful advice. It’s not always easy to find the right lawyer. However, this will help you to make sure that you get the most value.

What is legal information?

Legal information simply refers to information about a legal topic. Legal information’s purpose is to explain in general terms how a particular aspect is supposed to work.

You can now find legal information almost anywhere. Legal information is available:

Print brochures, product disclosure statements and information summaries, as well as fact sheets (including those published in governments) can be ordered.
Presentations at conferences, seminars, webinars, and other training sessions
Newsletters and blogs

Websites, including websites that are operated by law firms, government websites, and business websites. This website, for example, contains a lot of legal information.

Even 20 years ago, only members of the legal profession had access to much of the information.

Access to legal information has been easier to find since law firms, including this one, began to market themselves online. Virtually all well-respected firms have a blog or a collection of articles that provide legal information on their area of expertise. This information is intended to help potential customers (you), solve any problem they may be facing.

Legal information is not reliable.

3 Reasons to Not Rely on Legal Information:

It is easy for legal information to become outdated quickly. It takes only a new case or a change in law to make legal information obsolete. Yes, the laws are changing constantly and new court decisions are being made every day by the courts. It is possible for legal information to lose currency in a matter of minutes.
Your circumstances are not taken into consideration when preparing legal information. Legal information is presented at an ‘in principle’ level. The specific facts of each case will determine the law’s application. Because there may be more than one law principle in play for any given situation, this is why it is so important to understand the differences. It is not intended that legal information can provide an exact and complete solution to every individual who reads it.
Legal information is subjective. One person can interpret the law as legal information. The interpretation of the law by that person might be correct, but it could also be wrong – at the time it’s produced or afterward (given court decisions). Remember that court cases often involve two teams of lawyers who are highly qualified and present opposing views about how the law should be applied. Only one will prevail.