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Authors

Grace M. Giesel

Abstract

Historically, a doctrine has existed within the area of unauthorized practice of law regulation which holds that a corporation or other entity cannot be licensed to practice law and thus cannot legally practice law. Even if the entity hires as an employee an attorney duly licensed to render the service, the doctrine forbids the attomey from representing any party other than the employer because if the attorney were to represent a third party, the entity, a nonlawyer, would be representing the third party, and this would violate the rule that corporations may not practice law.2 The primary motivating rationale of the doctrine is prevention of nonlawyer interference with the attorney-client relationship, especially with regard to the independence of professional judgment of the attomey-employee' In commenting on the doctrine when faced with the question of whether attomeys could practice as professional corporations in the early 1960s, the Ohio Supreme Court stated: "[I]t is obvious that so far as members of the bar are concerned the idea of the practice of law within a corporate structure is an emotional thing. It is much like 'cats, olives and Roosevelt;' it is either enthusiastically embraced or resolutely rejected

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