Court Opinion

ID: 9665421
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:48:22.158642+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:15.745093
License: Public Domain

ROBERTSON, Chief Justice,
concurring in result.
This Court has long and properly held that it is the final arbiter in determining what acts constitute the practice of law. Hulse v. Criger, 363 Mo. 26, 247 S.W.2d 855, 857 (1952); Reed v. Labor and Industrial Relations Commission, 789 S.W.2d 19, 20 (Mo.banc 1990). The principal opinion defines certain clerical activities undertaken by respondents in this case as the practice of law. The principal opinion further determines that nonlawyers may provide these services given certain safeguards. I disagree with both of these determinations. First, I do not believe this Court’s power to define the practice of law necessarily includes the power to authorize nonlawyers to engage in any aspect of that practice no matter how limited. Second, I do not believe that respondent’s clerical activities, approved by the principal opinion as the “authorized practice of law” by non-lawyers, are in fact the practice of law.
Section 484.010.2, RSMo 1986, upon which the principal opinion relies, defines the “law business” as “the drawing or the procuring of or assisting in the drawing for a valuable consideration of any paper, document or instrument affecting or relating to secular rights.” Section 484.020, RSMo 1986, makes it a misdemeanor for any person not licensed to practice law to “do law business.” Reading these statutes together, one finds a clear intent on the part of the General Assembly to assist the Court in protecting the public from receiving incom*850petent legal advice by unlicensed laypersons. The legislature makes it a crime for a nonlawyer to practice law. I see no good reason for the Court to diminish this protection by claiming that some law practice by nonlawyers may be authorized. In my view, and in the view of this Court from Hulse until today, only a lawyer is authorized to practice law in Missouri. If only lawyers may practice law in this state, it follows that respondents in this case may not engage in the activities under scrutiny here if they are the practice of law.
The Hulse/Section 484.010 definition of the law business focuses on the “drawing” of legal documents. The drawing of a legal document is more than the clerical act of filling names, legal descriptions and prices into blanks on form contracts. To draw a legal document is to use words to create legally binding rights and obligations and to delineate the boundaries of those rights and obligations. A blank form contract, drafted and approved by an attorney, has already created and defined the legal rights and obligations undertaken by those who wish to enter into it. The practice of law ends when the contract describing the standard transaction is completed in blank form. I would hold that the filling in of blanks in legal instruments, previously drafted by attorneys, using common knowledge regarding the information placed in those blanks, does not constitute the practice of law. This conclusion has been reached by a number of courts considering the question. Miller v. Vance, 463 N.E.2d 250 (Ind.1984); Lowell Bar Ass’n v. Loeb, 315 Mass. 176, 52 N.E.2d 27 (1943); State Bar v. Kupris, 366 Mich. 688, 116 N.W.2d 341 (1962); State ex rel. Johnson v. Childe, 139 Neb. 91, 295 N.W. 381 (1941); Pioneer Title Ins. & Trust Co. v. State Bar, 74 Nev. 186, 326 P.2d 408 (1958); State Bar ¶. Guardian Abstract & Title Co., 91 N.M. 434, 575 P.2d 943 (1978); Cain v. Merchants Nat’l Bank & Trust Co., 66 N.D. 746, 268 N.W. 719 (1936); Oregon State Bar v. Security Escrows, Inc., 233 Or. 80, 377 P.2d 334 (1962).
The principal opinion is quite correct when it finds that the selection of the proper form, the preparation of non-standardized contracts, and the provision of legal advice constitute the practice of law and may not be undertaken by laypersons. Further, I fully concur in the conclusion that attorneys employed by escrow companies may not provide legal services to the escrow company’s customers.