Lawdiscuss.com - Stack Exchange site for legal advice • Hacker News Board

Re: Lawdiscuss.com - Stack Exchange site for legal advice

#21

Post by byrneseyeview » Mon, Feb 08, 2010, 8:52 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #11

byrneseyeview wrote: post #8

They also need to give everyone a default "IANAL" badge, which they lose if they're photographed holding 1) a piece of paper saying "Hi, LawDiscuss.com, I'm $username!" and a legible law school diploma.

Except aren't there rules about lawyers giving advice to people who aren't their clients?

I think grellas can answer this better than I can. I imagine it's something like what happens with stocks: a broker can say "I like IBM. I think it's going up from here," but has to footnote it with "This is not advice, and is no substitute for your own research. Ask a financial advisor before etc."

Re: Lawdiscuss.com - Stack Exchange site for legal advice

#22

Post by joelhaus » Mon, Feb 08, 2010, 10:33 PM UTC

huxant wrote: post #10

I am sure if they figure out a way to make the best answers and best advice givers float to the top, similar to the seeking alpha cred system it will become very useful. Information wants to be free and the law is free to access, but difficult to gain access to for the layman. My concern is the legal profession makes it's bacon by keeping the law mysterious and vexing. Legalese is often needlessly complicated and obf…

The nature of reality is the cause of the legal professions complexity. Legalese is simply a tool used in order to make the communication more precise and uniform (you could say the same thing about programming). Without legalese, you would undoubtedly see a dramatic rise in court filings (like in programming, you would see more bugs).

It's similar to programming in that you are attempting to draw up rules/parameters for a game, but more challenging because the system it operates in is usually less constrained.

Take this for what it's worth; I would call myself neither an expert in law or programming.

Re: Lawdiscuss.com - Stack Exchange site for legal advice

#23

Post by kyro » Mon, Feb 08, 2010, 10:45 PM UTC

metra wrote: post #15

kyro wrote: post #4

Something about the whole Stack Overflow/Exchange-type answer site look is very off-putting.

What is off-putting about it? Please elaborate as I've found SO very, very helpful. Specifically, these points have made the site so helpful: - The badge system rewards good answers. - The most popular questions and answers float to the top. - The accepted answer gets floated to the top. - Questions and answers can be edited by other users for clarification - Community wikis provide invaluable information from users…

It's way too cluttered with bold colors and bold fonts. I'm always so overwhelmed and confused when I land on a site like that. All the information is in your face.