Should questions about legal matters be on-topic?
Surprisingly, I couldn't find this question asked on meta yet. The closest I could find is "Should we have a custom close/on hold reason for questions that require a lawyer/accountant?, and the result was a weak preference for "No" to that question.
This recently asked question is what prompted me to ask this here on meta:
How to get a girlfriend off a quitclaim when it was just signed and she is now leaving?
This is a difficult question. Most questions about legal matters will have a financial component. And many questions about finance deal with laws. Where do we draw a line between what is appropriate for this site, and what is not? Here is what I propose:
We should make questions about legal disputes off topic. By "legal disputes," I mean questions that are clearly about a real dispute between two individuals. Here is why:
In any question about a legal dispute, we are only hearing one side of the story. There is no way for us to find out which details we are not getting.
It will generally be impossible for us to get all the information we need. Without reading a contract, we really can't know who is right in the dispute.
It is not appropriate for us on this site to take sides in a dispute. Let's say for the sake of discussion that we are given every piece of information we need. We know the jurisdiction, we have a copy of any contracts, and we have all of our questions answered. It still would not be appropriate, in my opinion, for us to take a legal side in this matter. That is what courts are for.
If the asker gets the wrong answer here, when they really need to contact a lawyer, it is very bad for them.
A question asking about what a quitclaim deed is, or the process of using one, might be on topic. This question (How to get a girlfriend off a quitclaim...), however, is clearly a legal dispute between the OP and his girlfriend. As is, it should be off-topic, in my opinion.
I suspect that this will be a gray area. For example, under this rule, this question (How do I get out of this disastrous situation?) would have an on-topic component and an off-topic component. The on-topic portion would be dealing with the lease, and the off-topic component would be dealing with the boyfriend. The on-topic portion is probably enough to keep that question open.
I don't think this rule is much different than what has already been happening on this site; however, this would give us something to add to the on-topic page that we could easily point to and say, "Sorry, off-topic."
Once the StackExchange Law site finishes the beta stage I think we can be more strict about this and migrate them over to the other site if they are good questions that are too legal to be on topic.
Many legal questions fall into the categories of too general, or too specific to a single individual, to be a good fit for SE's stated mission .
There is a middle ground of questions about general definitions and principles. So the mere mention of law isn't reason to close.
But requests for legal advice (as opposed to "should I talk to a lawyer") inherently call for expertise at a level we aren't set up to handle. Some (most?) of the recent property questions fall squarely into that bucket.
I don't think there is a need for specific policy about legal questions separate from other off-topic questions. I can't view the linked question now since it was deleted, but I think questions on such matters are often simply off-topic as they are not really financial in nature.
As a counterpoint to Ben Miller's answer, though: I think we should be cautious about rejecting questions just because they are about a real dispute. If an answer gives incorrect advice or wrongly leads the person away from contacting a lawyer, etc., when that is what they really need to do, then that is a problem with the answer. We should not close questions just because they might lead to bad answers.
Many questions that seem to be of the form "How can I resolve dispute X with person Y" may allow for answers that provide information on the underlying personal-finance issues without attempting to actually resolve that particular dispute. (For instance, we have seen many questions about credit-card disputes with merchants or issuers that can be answered with information on how credit cards work, how user liability is limited by law, how problems may be avoided by switching to a different bank, etc.) I think answers can give useful and relevant information on many such matters, even if the original asker feels unsatisfied because his/her individual issue wasn't "solved".
In short, we should not reject questions that ask for advice on a specific dispute. We should just not give answers that fall into the traps Ben Miller mentions when they try to resolve that specific dispute. Instead, we should give useful information on the topic of the dispute, insofar as we can. (Of course, there are certainly questions that don't provide enough detail to even take a stab, and I think it's fine to close those as unclear if the asker doesn't edit to add needed info.)
