Legal:Wikimedia Legal Disclaimer
If you have participated in discussions with Wikimedia Foundation legal team, you may have noticed that advice is often bookended with a disclaimer stating that the attorney acts as a counselor for the Foundation exclusively and that we are not offering legal advice.
As an organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, our lawyers must abide by the state’s rules of professional conduct; otherwise, we risk potentially being disciplined by the California Bar. Disciplinary action could result in reputational damage, disbarment, or potential liability.
- Under California’s Rules of Professional Conduct, we can only provide professional advice to the Wikimedia Foundation itself.[1] As in-house lawyers for the Foundation, we may not represent other clients, including unfortunately community members. Compliance with these ethics provisions is not intended to build a wall between an organization and its constituents, especially, when, as here, there would be no Foundation without the community. That said, the ethics directives are firm that, as in-house lawyers, we can only professionally advise one client in this type of situation, namely the Foundation. (When we do advise our client, the Foundation, we almost always outline the perspective and needs of the community given that the mission of the Foundation includes support of the community.)
- Individuals’ legal inquiries are shaped by the specific facts of their case and the laws of the applicable jurisdiction. As the legal team of a nonprofit organization with an enormous volunteer base, we are not in a position to understand fully the facts of every case, preventing us from offering thorough, individualized advice, even if it were possible.
For these reasons, we use the disclaimer template to ensure our discussions are not misunderstood as legal advice to others as we discuss generally with community members topics of legal interest. If a community member wants official legal advice, they should contact their own lawyer. Some non-profit organizations, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sometimes agree to represent users of websites and advise on particular issues.
[1] See Rule 3-100 cmt. 1; 3-600(D) http://rules.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/10/documents/2013_CaliforniaRulesofProfessionalConduct.pdf