Legal Information and Legal Advice

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• Legal advice is interpreting what statutes and case law mean or how it applies to a specific set of facts

Examples of Legal Advice

• Interpreting what statutes and case law mean or how it applies to a specific set of facts. E.g.: When we go over your list of assets, I can explain which

would be considered community property and which are separate property.

• Providing procedural recommendations, such as what type of application to make or which level of court to use. E.g.: At the next court appearance, we should ask for a continuance because…
• Providing research of legislation, court rules and cases and applying the law to the facts of a given situation. E.g.: There are a number of cases that would support your claim for damages for personal injuries. They are as follows….
• Filling out forms or telling you to put certain information in a form, listing particular persons in a complaint and/or identifying a specific amount of damages to seek. E.g.: In this section of the form, we will ask for…

Legal Advice Questions

• How do I find out what case law or other law applies to a situation?
• How do I find out how to interpret case law or other law relevant to a legal situation?
• Under what circumstances are certain procedures used? Go through universal litigation procedures of a typical court case. Draw up a decision tree of an overall court case. Using proper complexity management, make this viewable on a single page.
• How do you identify prayer? Ie, what you can ask for as damages?
• How do you determine which claim of a case to pursue, and with what emphasis, when there are multiple or potential claims to be made?
• When there is no law that applies to a situation but you have been damaged, what do you plead? Is there an ultimate catchall law? What is this law?
• How do you identify what type of case you have in front of you and how to you formulate a specific case pleading or claim?

Examples of Legal Information

• Reading the legal definition of words. E.g.: Community property actions are civil claims that divide the property obtained during a marriage between divorcing spouses.
• Identifying procedural definitions such as who the people are in court and what steps take place. E.g.: A plaintiff is the party who files the complaint or

petition. A defendant is the party against whom a complaint is made. There are three ways to respond to a complaint: file an answer, file a demur, or do nothing.

• Showing persons how to find legislation, court rules, and cases as well as other online and print resources. E.g.: California Forms of Pleading and Practice provides templates to help litigate civil cases. Digests identify cases you can use.
• Directing patrons to online and print resources which contain court forms and instructions. E.g.: The California Judicial Council Forms are a collection of general use legal forms, which includes various pleadings and discovery forms. Form packets are found on the Court’s website.

Legal Info Questions

• What is the best resoruce on legal definitions of words?
• What is the best resource on how to understand procedures? (not what the actual procedures are, but how to derive procedures)
• How does a lay person find the laws and cases etc surrounding a specific situation or case?
• How does one identify the elements of a specific cases? This is just a shopping list for a given case type.

• What is the most comprehensive source of legal forms and templates?

Automation

• How do you create a Legal Form Construction Set? Ie, what are all the critical elements of a form, template, or contract.