IAR Legal Hotline Terms and Conditions
The Iowa Association of REALTORS® Legal Hotline is a membership service available exclusively to our members. The Legal Hotline has been created to give members continuing educational support on broad legal matters affecting the real estate industry and seeks to lower our member’s exposure to risk in the profession. The Legal Hotline is available to answer generalized questions involving principles of law that are relevant to the industry. General questions regarding REALTOR Code of Ethics, Arbitration, MLS Issues, license law questions, among others may be asked.
The Legal Hotline provides general information and is for educational use. Although the Legal Hotline is staffed by a licensed attorney, no attorney-client relationships will be formed through use of the hotline. Further, any member who uses the hotline may not offer information from the hotline to their clients or customers, nor may they represent that information obtained from a lawyer staffing the legal hotline is authoritative or is legal advice. Because members of the Association will not form an attorney-client relationship with a legal hotline attorney, they should always consider seeking out independent legal counsel to receive any legal advice they may need.
Additionally, there is no confidentiality between a member and the Legal Hotline. Any questions asked should be general and should never include identifying information of the parties in a transaction. Questions asked to a Legal Hotline attorney may be shared with the entire State’s membership, without identifying information of members, to help educate everyone on important topics. If you have any ongoing disputes or legal matters, you should call a private lawyer to ensure you can have a discussion about your issue in confidence. The Legal Hotline attorney will not review any documents, forms, contracts, or any other similar documents that apply to a specific transaction. The only documents that the Legal Hotline attorney will review are standard forms prepared by the Association that members have general questions about.
Once a member asks a question, any response given by an attorney staffing the Legal Hotline is based solely on the facts recited in the question. Any question involving principles of law may have a very different analysis with even the slightest variation of facts. The legal hotline can only provide information based on the facts presented to the hotline. The Legal Hotline does not investigate the facts of a particular situation independently. The response provided by the hotline is intended to provide general educational insight and does not offer any predictions of a result. The Iowa Association of REALTORS and its attorneys assume no actual or implied legal responsibility for any errors in response to questions through this service.
By using the Legal Hotline, I understand all of this, as explained in the paragraphs above. I fully understand that no attorney-client relationship will be formed between me and the Iowa Association of REALTORS® or its attorneys. I understand that the information I receive from the Legal Hotline is educational in nature and is not legal advice and that I need to independently obtain outside legal counsel if I wish to receive legal advice. I further agree by using this service that neither the Iowa Association of REALTORS®, nor any attorneys that staff its Legal Hotline are responsible for any errors in providing responses to questions.
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