Could a person's lawyer legally answer that person's Law SE RSLA?

Question

1. I hire a lawyer for legal issue ABC.
2. I post a request for specific legal advice on Law Stack Exchange about unrelated legal issue XYZ. I do not tell my lawyer about it; neither of us knows that the other uses Law SE or can identify each other's accounts.
3. My lawyer answers my question, thinking he is giving legal advice to a non-client when he is actually answering a client's question.

Have I or my lawyer done anything illegal, other than violating Law SE's policies?

What if legal issue ABC is me suing my employer for wage discrimination because they're paying me less because of my religious belief that it's wrong to accept digital payments and that I should insist on a paper paycheck, and XYZ is me asking the best way to fight a traffic ticket issued because I did not stop at a stop sign that had been vandalized beyond recognition by my second cousin once removed, who I was supposed to be taking care of in loco parentis at the time of the vandalism?

Answer 1

3. My lawyer answers my question, thinking he is giving legal advice to a non-client when he is actually answering a client's question.

But if you read the FAQ, posts at law.stachexchange are not legal advice. In fact, questions that are so specific as to risk becoming a request for legal advice are routinely closed.

But let's go further:

• The issue at hand is not the one your lawyer is hired to help you with. He is not your lawyer for that issue.

• Even if we considered the relationship through law.stackexchange legal representation, the conversation would not be privileged. You are posting in a public forum, and expecting reply in the same way. You are free to waive the privilege of communication with your lawyer, and you are doing that by using this way of communicating with him.

• At this point, the only thing your lawyer would have done would be voluntarily giving for free some info that he could have billed you for. What exactly would be the issue here? It is exactly what pro bono is for.

The only way to breach confidentiality would be if your lawyer were to convey things that you said to him confidentially to the public, but here it would not be relevant if the OPs author were already his customer or not.

Answer 2

Law.SE and forums are not privileged

You don't WANT your lawyer to answer your RSLA on a public forum, just like you don't want to have all your dirty laundry washed in public.

Lawyers may not discuss your laundry in public

Lawyers have ethical rules they need to follow. This includes them being banned from discussing your case with others in a non-privileged fashion. You can instruct him to, but he can't on his own. It is often bad for your case anyway.

Example

Let's assume Alice wants to sue her neighbor Bob after she found a land sale document she found in her attic, which claims that she might own a strip of 2 inches width on his side of the fence. All she has is that single document that gives an approximate size of the lot rounded to full feet. Before that and since then the lots have been marked down on the land register with a precision down to a quarter inch, from well-known measuring points. In other words, the claim is tenuous at best.

Alice reaches out to Larry Lawyer to represent her in the matter. He tells her that the document might be worth nothing as the things stand, especially since the sale contract indicates the lot from the register which had been up to date with more precision at an earlier date than the contract. But he agrees to fight the case for her as best he can.

The next day, Alice also makes posts about her plan to sue on many places on the internet. Larry Lawyer just happens to spot Alice's post with the above story. He realizes she is his client. Still, he writes down the legal advice he gave her the day before.

Larry just breached his duties as a lawyer. He also breached the stack's guidelines not to give legal advice. He also might have given away a lot of grounds for defending the case against dismissal or judgment on the merits.