The Supreme Court of Ohio has entered an order finding that Legally Mine LLC and Daniel McNeff engaged in the unauthorized practice of law in Ohio in the case of Ohio State Bar Assoc. v. Legally Mine LLC, Ohio Supreme Case No. 2025-0037 (Feb. 20, 2025). The Ohio Supreme Court’s order also approves a consent decree that will be discussed below and ordered Legally Mine LLC and McNeff to pay a $5,000 fine plus an additional $1,220 in costs.
The consent decree requires that Legally Mine LLC and McNeff provide to the Ohio State Bar Association (“OSBA”) a list of all their Ohio clients with those client’s contact information. Legally Mine LLC and McNeff are also to contact every one of their Ohio clients and notify them that the Ohio State Bar Association (“OSBA”) has initiated a complaint for the unauthorized practice of law and that a consent decree has been entered.
Legally Mine LLC and McNeff are required by the consent decree to explain that an Ohio attorney was not involved in the preparation or review of the legal advice and documents which those clients received from Legally Mine LLC. To the extent that legally entities were created for the clients in other states, Legally Mine LLC must inform the Ohio clients whether an attorney licensed in those states was involved in the preparation or review of legal advice and documents given to those clients.
Next, each Ohio client may elect to either have their own Ohio-licensed attorney (or an attorney licensed in the applicable state) review the asset protection plans and documents prepared by Legally Mine LLC, or the Ohio client may simply terminate Legally Mine LLC’s services and obtain a full refund of all payments. Each Ohio client must also be informed of their right to seek independent counsel regarding Legally Mine LLC and its services.
Legally Mine LLC and McNeff are also required to obtain a receipt confirming written contact with each of their Ohio clients, provide a copy of their written notices to the OSBA, and file an affidavit with the court that confirms compliance.
The Order of the Supreme Court of Ohio speaks for itself and you can read it here. To the extent that my summary of that Order and the Order itself diverge in any way, if at all, then the text of the Order controls.
ANALYSIS
What follows is purely my opinion and does not relate to Legally Mine LLC or Daniel McNeff.
Utah attorney Jay Mitton (1941-2020) is sometimes hailed by certain persons and groups as the “Father of Asset Protection”. That is a lie. The real “Father of Asset Protection” (if, indeed, there is any such person) was Colorado attorney Barry Engel (1954-2017), who persuaded the Cook Islands to adopt self-settled spendthrift trust legislation in the late 1980s and thus started the field of asset protection.
Barry Engel provided legitimate and effective asset protection plans to his clients and was an occasional speaker (along with me one time, circa. 2000) to the American Bar Association’s Real Property, Trust & Estates section. Barry was a born innovator and went on to demonstrate that more exotic structures, such as Liechtenstein Foundations, could be efficiently and safely employed as cutting-edge asset protection devices. But this is not about Barry Engel.
Back to Jay Mitton, other than being a licensed attorney, he was everything that Barry Engel was not. Mitton was ― and, again, this is only my opinion ― little more than a quick-buck scam artist who sold asset protect kits of dubious value and formed numerous LLCs and other entities for his clients which probably accomplished nothing. Mitton’s snake oil was mostly sold to doctors, and a member of his team once told me that the Mitton presentations involved the use of shills in the audience who would jump to the front of the podium to purchase the kits so as to cause a stampede by the real buyers who were afraid that they might get sold out before they could purchase one.
But this is not about Jay Mitton either. No need to further beat the dead.
What Mitton left behind was a legacy of folks, mostly in Utah, who continued to run his scam. These groups will use fancy-sounding names, something like “American Medical Institute For Physician’s Asset Protection” (I just made that name up), and will go to medical conferences and sell basically the same junk that Mitton once himself sold.
Some of these groups involve attorneys, but some don’t. Or, attorneys may be loosely affiliated with a particular group, but the group is not organized as a law firm and any attorney’s association with the group is at best nebulous. These groups all have websites that make them sound like a law firm, but then if you read the disclaimers closely they will say that they are not a law firm, although they have attorneys on staff or standing by. Whatever that means.
The problem with these groups is that not only are you being sold something that is probably close to worthless, but by not dealing directly with an attorney there is no attorney-client privilege which protects the communications between these groups and their clients. As I have written many times, the vitality of the attorney-client privilege is paramount in asset protection planning for many reasons, not the least being the intent test of the voidable transaction laws (was: fraudulent transfer laws).
Another problem is that these groups purport to offer solutions everywhere, although (and something else that I have very frequently pointed out) asset protection is often very dependent upon what the laws of a particular state do or do not allow. Thus, if a client decided to engage an attorney to do asset protection planning for them, that attorney had better be licensed in the state where the client will reside. Any group claiming that it can do asset protection on anything like a nationwide basis is engaging in at least some degree of deceit if not outright fraud.
Note that the lawyers who are affiliated with these groups are also putting their own licenses at risk because they are assisting non-attorneys to engage in the unlicensed practice of law. Either they know this and don’t care, which should worry you, or they don’t know this and never bothered to inquire further, which should worry you even more.
This is absolutely not to say that everybody in Utah is an asset protection scam artist as that would simply not be true. There are some completely legitimate, and more importantly, licensed asset protection planning attorneys in Utah who stay within their ethical swim lanes and provide the asset protection solutions which have been sanctioned by the Utah legislature. Nothing at all wrong with these attorneys, but they’re not the ones that I am talking about.
Very simply, a person who desires asset protection planning must deal with an attorney licensed in their state who actually engages in planning and not kit-selling or mass LLC formations. No firms of non-lawyers, no firms where the participation of an attorney is nebulous, no firms that sell prepacked products or provide you with forms for you to fill out (even if they assist).
There are a number of these asset protection scam groups out there and they are particularly aggressive in their marketing. They have very high profiles on social media. They will get speakers to appear at high-profile events. They will drop a lot of names of their supposed clients and make you feel like they are the only group in the world who knows anything about asset protection planning. But that is exactly what scammers do. If you start do dig deeper and check out their backgrounds, or usually the lack thereof other than they seem to do a lot of presentations, you will eventually find that there is nothing really there but a bunch of high-volume marketers.
These groups are not going to provide you with anything like efficacious asset protection planning despite their promises. The only thing that will really happen is that your wallet will become lighter.
If you don’t know whether you are dealing with one of these groups, and hopefully before you sign anything with them or give them any money, take the time to place a phone call to your state’s bar association and check them out. The folks there will be happy to tell you who is licensed and who isn’t. At least then you’ll know.
Oh, and you can sometimes ask these groups whether they have had anything to do with Jay Mitton. That will give you the answer you need too.