Attorney-Client Relationships in Cyberspace: The Peril and the Promise

Lanctot, Catherine J.

doi:10.2307/1373064

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…The results of the analysis confirm previous research (e.g., Lanctot, 1999;Anesa, 2016;Anesa & Kulbicki, 2022), highlighting the growing impact of digital technologies on the practice of law. With more and more individuals turning to the Internet to seek legal guidance, law professionals are increasingly using online platforms to offer their assistance.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…Within the legal field, Lanctot (1999) found that "lawyers have begun to use the medium of cyberspace to give specific legal advice to laypeople who request it" (p. 151). In his study on free legal advice on the Internet, Maggs (2006), for example, illustrated how online discussion forums represent a "new and rapidly growing method of providing legal advice", in which "ordinary people pose specific legal questions and both ordinary people and lawyers answer them" (p. 483).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Disseminating legal information on online law forums in English and Italian

Diani

2023

Ibérica

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The advent of the Internet has had a significant impact on the transfer of specialised knowledge from experts to non-experts. Over the years, the way in which digital tools such as blogs, forums and websites have been conveying information has had a strong impact on people’s understanding of specialised knowledge: popularisation thus functions as a tool for the “empowerment” of the lay people (Bondi et al., 2019, p. 2). The focus of the present paper is on legal knowledge communication from expert to non-expert online from a cross-cultural perspective. The aim is to investigate the linguistic-discursive strategies deployed by English and Italian law professionals providing legal advice to lay people on online law forums. The contribution of online law forums to legal knowledge dissemination has received scholarly attention in English. Relevant research across languages is still lacking. This paper attempts to help fill this gap, by illustrating and comparing the ways legal information is given on the UK LegalExpert and Italian La Legge per Tutti forums. Adopting a discourse analytical approach, the analysis shows that both British and Italian legal experts give advice using a variety of strategies, ranging from impersonal explanatory to interpersonal and communicative practices. The paper attempts to provide further insights into effective computer-mediated legal discourse for legal professionals and language scholars alike.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disseminating legal information on online law forums in English and Italian

Diani

2023

Ibérica

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show abstract

“…As I noted above, the arrival of the first DIY law packs met with ridicule. Lanctot (1999) describes how in the first half of the 20th century the American Bar Association condemned legal advice columns in newspapers and on radio shows, and imposed severe restrictions, prohibiting members from providing detailed legal advice. The advent of new ICT means that it is very difficult to 7 Those who are familiar with the work of Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the most prominent proponents of individual self-help, will undoubtedly recognise the parallel with its 12-step recovery programme in Vive's step-by-step guide to divorce.…”

Section: The Legal Expert In Vivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even free advice is often a covert advertisement or an opportunity to 'plug' a product. The expert's position online is potentially fraught with ethical and legal dilemmas (Lanctot, 1999). At the same time, the emphasis on the importance of first-hand experience in sources of cyberadvice has a distinct emancipatory potential: the voice of users appears to decentre the expert as the fount of all knowledge.…”

Section: Shifting Relationship Between Experts and Usersmentioning

confidence: 99%