Injunctive Relief Against the Unlicensed Practice of Law as Represented by Drafting of Legal Instruments

During the past several years, encroachments by notaries public, realtors, trust and title companies, and banks and others into fields of activity which the legal profession consider to be practice of law, and from which the Bar feel protection of the public requires exclusion of laymen, have reached such proportions as to create a problem calling for careful consideration by the American Bar Association and the various state and local bar associations. The field into which these encroachments have been most general is that of preparing legal instruments, particularly wills, trust agreements, deeds, mortgages, and contracts. To curb such activity, there has been of late no small amount of litigation in many states wherein the unlicensed practice of law as represented in the draftmg of legal instruments has been prosecuted under criminal statutes, or the offenders cited for contempt or restrained by equity from further practice. In several states statutes have been enacted defining the drawing of legal documents as practice of law.