"The unauthorized practice of a profession is prohibited by state laws."

"unauthorized practice of a profession" is not the same as offering an occasional comment on a blog. It's pretending to be a lawyer or acting in a way a lawyer would or charging for it.

For one thing it would be seen as de minimis not to mention the fact that there is no compensation for the service.

Think of it this way. You may need a license to have an office and offer therapy and pass some tests. But do you know of anyone who ever got charged with impersonating a social worker by offering advice for free to a friend?

It's anecdotal, so it doesn't carry much weight, but I have firsthand experience with comments such as those in that thread carrying legal consequences for people. I'm not legally permitted to discuss it beyond that.

Every day prosecutors decide what crimes to charge people with (or not) and people decide when they are damaged enough by something to hire a lawyer. And of course there are cases where someone is pissed off and will sue with no merit to get revenge with barely a leg to stand on.

"I'm not legally permitted to discuss it beyond that."

Sorry this had to happen to you and I see where your caution comes from.

can't you find one in which you don't have such first hand experience with?

Lawyers and their clients are probably pretty cautious about discussing such incidents. Imagine you've just had some negative legal repercussions for discussing a case online. If you then wrote a blog post or whatever about that, you'd be doing pretty much the same thing that got you in trouble in the first place. So this is one good reason why it might be hard to find write-ups of cases like this.

No, it doesn't help in the least. The link you post mentions ONE CASE where a committee of the Texas Supreme Court apparently made a complaint because someone published a self help legal book. That complaint was dropped.

Now, how again is publishing and taking money for a self-help legal book (and indeed suffering NO legal liability for doing so) analogous to discussing the law on the internet with no money exchanging hands?

Again, where exactly are these "cases" of "liability" the OP is citing?

I'm not claiming the link contains mountains of references to actual cases. It was meant as a helpful general overview of the topic. The parent comment asked for a citation of the fact that "there is also, in some cases, liability created for the person giving the advice." The link I gave clearly states that there can be civil and criminal liability related to unauthorized practice of law.

Surprising to get down voted for a comment consisting of "this should help" plus a link to a relevant source.

Also, the fact that I cited this law doesn't mean I'm giving an opinion as to whether HN should have a policy about legal advice. I'm just trying to contribute to the discussion by interjecting some relevant facts.

As to my personal opinion, I lean slightly against an HN prohibition on the giving or soliciting legal advice. While the state may have something to say about it, I generally think it's not PG's responsibility to protect people from bad advice--which is the whole purpose of the law in the first place.