The State of New York punishes practice of law by individuals who are not licensed attorneys as a felony since 2013 and has been punishing it as a misdemeanor for years prior.
Licensing of attorneys is declared to be done by the government for protection of the public.
Yet, the U.S. Supreme Court, as far back as in 1969, and that is 46 years ago, has struck down state regulation punishing a person for providing legal assistance to other prisoners.
The Supreme Court has stated in Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483 (1969) the following:
The above U.S. Supreme Court case should be read broadly to ensure the intended effect of the 1st, 5th and 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to ensure constitutionally guaranteed true access to court for poor and poorly educated litigants vindicating their constitutional rights.
When read broadly, we have a U.S. Supreme Court case, a mandatory precedent for the states, that provides that in the absence of "some provision" by the states for a "reasonable alternative" to assist "illiterate or poorly educated" individuals to prepare legal documents pertaining to their fundamental constitutional rights, the state may not validly enforce a regulation which absolutely bars provision of legal services to such indigent litigants by non-attorneys.
Yet, we have not only inmates who continue to struggle, without legal representation, and without funds to pay to prepare legal documents for post-conviction relief, but we also have criminal defendants who, according to the State of the Judiciary 2015 address in New York, are habitually denied counsel at arraignment, or provided substandard representation by public defenders carrying unmanageable case loads.
We also have people being evicted, losing custody of their children, being foreclosed on their homes, being sued for consumer debt, and having no access to a lawyer because these litigants are poor.
The only thing that bars such litigants from representation in court by a knowledgeable, but unlicensed representative, for free or for a reduced cost, is criminal statutes for unauthorized practice of law, statutes that should be held unconstitutional where the state does not provide a "reasonable alternative" to a private attorney to assist the illiterate, poorly educated and poor litigants in their needs.
The State of New York does not have such a reasonable alternative.
Therefore, attorney licensing in New York, declared to be in place to protect the consumers, does not protect the consumers, is in fact hurting the consumers, is unconstitutional as blocking poor litigants' access to courts and preventing them to have trusted and knowledgeable, if not licensed, court representatives of their own choice.
Such attorney licensing system clearly exist only as an anti-competitive measure to protect the market and high prices that the majority of the public cannot afford, for politically connected attorneys.
And, therefore, attorney licensing should be abolished as not providing the declared benefit to the consumers and hurting the consumers.
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