Easy Probate Contributes to Sham Practices

Richard Acello, Taking up UPL: California Law Helps State Bar Fight Unauthorized Practice, ABA J. e-Report, March 24, 2006, discusses “California’s new UPL law [which] went into effect Jan. 1. Under it, the state bar files a petition with the appropriate superior court. The court can issue an interim order to cease an illegal law practice * * *.  This kind of order may appoint attorneys to seize files, bank accounts and computers, and to redirect mail and phone calls. After a later evidentiary hearing, the judge may either vacate or modify the order or make it permanent.”

The article also discusses the experience in Florida where Lori Holcomb, director of the UPL Department of the Florida Bar, places part of the blame for sham practices on a person’s “misplaced confidence in one’s own legal abilities, often caused by experience with * * * probate.”