This Is Such a Good Argument for Prohibiting Lawyers From Writing Laws

 1/25/22 New York Times:

The Rev. John Udo-Okon, a Pentecostal minister in the Bronx, has a lot of congregants who are sued by debt collectors and don’t know what to do.

Like most of the millions of Americans sued over consumer debt each year, Pastor Udo-Okon’s congregants typically cannot retain a lawyer. When they fail to respond to the suit, they lose the case by default.

“They don’t know how to fight back; they just give up, only they find out that their credit has been destroyed,” Pastor Udo-Okon said.

Pastor Udo-Okon would like to become a volunteer counselor and help people defend themselves against these suits by participating in a training program created by Upsolve, a financial education and civil rights nonprofit. The program would teach him how to walk people through the first steps of contesting a consumer debt lawsuit.

But there’s a catch: Offering tips on how to fight a suit would probably be illegal. Rules in New York, as in most states, forbid practicing law without a license, and giving individualized advice on how to respond to litigation is generally considered practicing law....

Americans do not legitimately owe most of the debt they are sued for, according to consumer advocates. A 2010 report by the Legal Aid Society found that in more than one-third of debt-collection cases reviewed, the debt had already been paid or had resulted from mistaken identity or identity theft; the statute of limitations on collecting the debt had expired; or the debt had been shed in bankruptcy. ACA International, a trade group for debt collectors, did not immediately respond on Tuesday to a request for comment on the Legal Aid Society’s report.

Marshal Coleman, a veteran consumer lawyer in Manhattan, said that most consumer debt suits were over matters of a few thousand dollars. “Typically, if a client like that comes to a lawyer,” he said, “a lawyer’s not going to be able to help them because the fees will exceed the value of the debt.”

There is a reason lawyers lean progressive; it creates victimized poor people to save.

A friend is a law professor specializing in First Amendment; he says the courts have upheld similar laws.  My solution: Write a Novel: You've Been Sued: One Man's Struggle for Justice.  Make it a "choose your own ending" book, so various plot twists solve all variants.  If the lawyers object that it really is not a novel, add deviant sex scenes to make it both protected free speech and a elementary school library selection.