In re Paplauskas

IJ filed an amicus brief in the Rhode Island Supreme Court which was considering recommendations from its Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee in three consolidated cases. Those cases involved non-attorneys’ role in real estate closings and the Committee’s recommendations that the Court treat conducting a title examination to determine the marketability of title, conducting a real estate closing, and drafting certain real estate-transaction related documents as the “practice of law” such that non-attorneys would be prohibited from doing those things, even though Rhode Island statutory law allows certain non-attorneys to engage in those activities.

IJ’s brief argues that the Committee’s recommendations had to be rejected because they would violate both the Rhode Island Constitution’s protections for economic liberty and the U.S. Constitution’s protection for free speech. On economic liberty, the brief notes the Rhode Island Constitution’s meaningful protections for economic liberty, the lack of any evidence of consumer harm (even though non-lawyers have long provided these services, including in Rhode Island), the harm to consumers from restricting who can provide these services, and the regulatory capture threat from the Committee’s almost-entirely-attorneys membership. On free speech, the brief notes that some of the Committee recommendations are to regulate pure speech and that speech regulated by state practice of law regulations is still protected by the First Amendment.