How are US state laws that regard who can practice law constitutional? I'm aware of a couple states that have alternative methods to become a lawyer but most states stipulate that all practicing attorneys must A. complete courses from a recognized college and B. stay in good standing with the state bar. What laws give authority to the non-gov state bars, who in turn dictate which schools and education are required? Why isn't law practiced freely on an open-market where merit alone is all a person would need to build a law practice?
States have a general police power, meaning that they can pass laws about whatever they want unless there's a specific reason they can't. A state does not have to give special justification for why something is in the realm of stuff they can regulate; someone challenging it has to say what specific section of the Constitution it violates. For a time, the Due Process clause of the US Constitution was considered to imply freedom of contract. This time ended in the 1930s. The doctrine of a constitutionally protected freedom of contract is pretty much completely dead. A state can't abridge the freedom of contract for no reason, but that's because just about any law needs some reason to be allowed. The level of review is that the law is rationally related to a legitimate state interest; this is not a very demanding level of review. Source State bar associations are given power by laws making it illegal to practice law without being a member of the bar and requiring licensed lawyers to comply with bar rules. State bars that control admission to practice are generally government agencies (specifically, agencies of the court system). When the state bar is not a government agency, attorney discipline and licensing is handled by a government agency (lawyers might have to join the bar, but the bar has to accept licensed lawyers as members; the bar's power in these cases is limited to recommendations to the courts).
The best method of finding a lawyer varies by practice area and type of matter and type of client. What makes sense for a DUI case to find a lawyer may not make sense if you are looking for a general counsel for a medium sized company. Word of mouth referrals are a good place to start if you can use them. Many good lawyers don't advertise very heavily because they can get all the work they need from word of mouth referrals, and this also screens out obviously bad lawyers. Many state bar associations provide lists of attorneys who practice in particular areas. See, e.g. the Colorado Bar Association Find-a-lawyer page. Even if they don't you can look at members of relevant bar committees in the area you need work done. Sometimes courts also provide lists of lawyers that practice in their court regularly. For example, the Denver Probate Court's in person clerk's office desk has a list of lawyers who work in the probate area. Looking at lawyers who represented someone similar to you in a court document from a similar case can also be fruitful if you can locate any such documents. In federal courts, if you know of a case, you can user the PACER system to locate court documents listing the lawyers in the case. Some state and local courts make documents filed in those cases available online. Look at websites offering continuing legal education courses for lawyers and contact lawyers teaching classes in practice areas where you need assistance. Looking for state bar journal articles on practice areas you need and contacting the authors of those journals can also be fruitful. Another strategy is to call lots of lawyers and ask for referrals from firms that can't take your case because they don't practice in the area where you need assistance. I get multiple cold calls every week in areas where I don't practice and I am routinely asked for referrals and make a good faith effort to provide them when I can. Another plus of this method is that even if you don't get useful legal advice or referrals from a cold call to a law firm, you may get clarification from the person you call about what kind of law or practice area is implicated in your case. For example, many people who really need probate work self-identify as needing real estate work because they want to clear up title to real estate owned by a dead person. And, a cold call might help focus your search on the right kind of lawyer. Similarly, you might call ordinary criminal lawyers for your case and find out that you really need a specialist white collar crime lawyer. In the U.K., hiring a barrister has historically often been intermediated by an individual known as a barrister's clerk, often working with a solicitor for a client to find a barrister for the client. Why does such a site give so little information? Historically, lawyer advertising and marketing was heavily regulated. Vestiges of those regulations remain common practice and still are part of the law in some jurisdictions. In particular, claims of having specializations, special expertise, and high success rates have been closely regulated.
It's virtually never going to be as complex as you're imagining. First, because in the vast majority of cases, the vast majority of lawyers will only be dealing with one body of law: either federal law or the law of the state in which they practice. A lawyer in Maine, for example, is likely to deal almost exclusively with contracts, torts, crimes, etc. that are controlled only by the laws of the United States or Maine. In the vast majority of the remaining cases, lawyers will only be dealing with two bodies of law: those of their home state and federal law. There may be conflicts between the two, but the law has developed a variety of doctrines for determining which rules control -- most notably the Erie Doctrine -- and they will have learned both bodies of law before passing the bar. And even when there are multiple parties from multiple jurisdictions, the lawyers will still rarely need to know the substantive law of more than one. To use your example, a contract dispute involving parties from multiple states will rarely require a lawyer to understand the contract law of every jurisdiction involved. Before the court ever gets to interpreting the contract, it will first consider the &quot;choice of law&quot; question, meaning that it must determine which state's laws control the contract. Once that question is answered, the court will proceed to determine the questions of formation, breach, and damages using the laws of the jurisdiction it has selected. So in your hypothetical, the court may conclude that because the contract was signed in New York, New York law controls. So it applies New York law, and the other states' laws become largely irrelevant. Second, the choice-of-law question may not even come up, because well-drafted contracts will include a choice-of-law provision, where the parties simply agree that the contract should be interpreted using the laws of California, or New York, or Delaware, or wherever. Third, even when there is a need to apply the law of multiple jurisdictions, it is often not as difficult as you're imagining, because so much of law is largely harmonized across the states. Much of the work in this area is spearheaded by the Uniform Law Commission, which has drafted widely adopted legislation governing, for example, sales of goods, leases, negotiable instruments,bank deposits, letters of credit, title documents, investment securities, secured transactions, trusts, trade secrets, partnerships, child custody, and arbitration. Undoubtedly, there are occasions where strange circumstances or bad legal advice lead to incredibly thorny procedural questions about choice of law, but only a very small share of lawyers will need to know many seriously divergent bodies of substantive law from multiple jurisdictions, and even then, it will likely be limited to two or three jurisdictions at the most.
Federal facilities are required to adhere to the flag code. Non-federal governmental entities are not, and the explanation is more complicated. In theory, the federal government should have very little power over the decision-making of state governments -- this is a principle of federalism and is expressly stated in the 10th Amendment. In practice, however, the federal government has a lot of power over state governments. Congress can condition the allotment of federal monies to states, i.e. block grants, as long as such a condition meets the five point test spelled out in South Dakota v. Dole. The most stringent of these points is that the condition "must not be coercive" so as to apply "irresistible pressure", creating a false choice where accepting money is the only realistic option (thus complying with the conditions). I couldn't find a clause within USC Title 4, Chapter 1 for withholding funds from states in the event of noncompliance, similar to one that exists for the national drinking age. Therefore states (state, county, municipal all treated as an extension of state power under the US Constitution) are not required to to adhere to the flag code. Theoretically, Congress could pass a new law that would condition the receipt of some federal funds on the states' compliance with the flag code. But the new low could face additional hurdles, since the condition must be "directly related to one of the main purposes for which... [the funds] are expended" (quoting from Dole). This restriction is the reason why states were given the right to opt out of the Obamacare medicare expansion without losing their pre-existing Medicaid funding (567 U. S. ____ (2012) at 51), and is also the reason why the recent "Sanctuary Cities Ban" is having legal trouble. It would be unlikely that any law like this would hold up. It's also worth noting that most states have their own flag law, which makes this whole discussion of the federal law's effect on state facilities. As you noted, since US v. Eichman, all criminal penalties for violating any flag code have been unenforceable against individuals. My best guess is that the proper method of enforcement in federal buildings is simply administrative action, since violating the code can provide cause for firing federal employees under Chapter 75 of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.
Very few terms have a single "legal" definition or meaning that applies to all laws, and can be looked up as if in a dictionary. Rather, when a specific meaning is needed in connection with a particular law, that law will include a definition. But that definition will often not apply to the use of the same term in other laws or other contexts. Here I suspect that the OP has found the definition section of a US Federal law regulating commercial transport in interstate commerce. Obviously in such a law, those terms would be defined in the context of commercial transport. That does not mean that the same meanings will be applied in other laws. Driver's licenses and other traffic and motor vehicle regulations are largely matters of state law in the US. Definitions from a federal law, or indeed any law but that state's Motor Vehicle Code (or whatever a given state calls such a body of law) will simply not be relevant. The argument sketched in the question simply does not follow.
It depends highly on which jurisdiction you're referring to. This is one of the areas where it varies state to state. &quot;Practicing law&quot; is not generally defined in statute, but the Wikipedia definition defines it as (emphasis mine): giving legal advice to clients, drafting legal documents for clients, and representing clients in legal negotiations and court proceedings such as lawsuits, and is applied to the professional services of a lawyer or attorney at law, barrister, solicitor, or civil law notary. Wikipedia defines Legal advice as the giving of a professional or formal opinion regarding the substance or procedure of the law in relation to a particular factual situation. and displays the following enforcement provision (emphasis mine): Criminal laws and enforcement of &quot;Unauthorized Practice of Law (UPL)&quot; statutes is the organized bar's preferred method. Thus, New Jersey has a law which makes it a “disorderly persons offense” to knowingly to engage in the unauthorized practice of law, and a “crime in the fourth degree” to commit UPL if one (a) creates a false impression that one is a lawyer; (b) derives a benefit from UPL, or (c) causes an injury by UPL. See also IANAL, which has some information about usage on the Internet: The case law standard for determining what comments cross the line is generally &quot;the application of law to facts specific to an individual seeking legal advice&quot;.
The question is oddly phrased: The law does not give allowances for its violation. Many laws have exceptions. E.g., the law against killing endangered animals contains an exception for defensive killings. Perhaps you are thinking of safe harbors? For example, there are general provisions in the law like "exigent circumstances" that allow police to proceed with actions that, absent those provisions, would constitute violations of law. "Permission" to violate a right can be granted explicitly in the form of a warrant, which allows law enforcement to "violate" specific property and freedom rights. Finally, one might consider an executive pardon or jury-nullification to be ex post "permission to break the law."
31 USC 330 enables the Dept. of Treasury to regulate those who are in the practice of representing persons before the Department. This results in Circular 230 which is a part of the Code of Federal Regulations. Part 10.3 specifies various types who are authorized to engage in the practice. The meaning of "practice" is not defined in the federal regs or the US code, so it has its ordinary meaning. To "practice" something is to habitually do something as a profession (not necessarily for money). The situation you describe does not in any reasonable interpretation constitute being a "practice". Moreover, except for talking to an IRS agent on the phone, the actions could not be construed as "representing" (and if I am correct in surmising that this was a simultaneous conversation with 3 people on the line, this wasn't "representing" since representing meaning to "do in someone's place", not "help someone while they do"). This contrasts with the typically stricter rules about "practicing law", which forbid filling out legal forms and so on.