NC is an attorney supervised state and per the most recent formal ethics opinion revised in January 2012 (Authorized Practice Advisory Opinion 2002-1) title searches are included in the scope of work that needs to be supervised by an attorney. Here's a link to the State Bar's website for Rule 5.5 (http://www.ncbar.com/rules/rules.asp?page=1&keywords=2002-1), at the very bottom it mentions this Opinion but I couldn't find the direct link to 2002-1 on the NC State Bars site. I've also attached a copy of the .pdf of this rule that I've saved and use to send to non-attorneys that ask for title searches(at least I think I did, hopefully the upload worked, first time I've done it on this site). /upload/NC Ethics Opinion Regarding Title Abstraction.pdf
Long story short if people or companies that aren't a NC attorney, do not have a NC attorney on staff or whose client is not a NC attorney and they still want pricing I recommend them to a local attorney that I do work for. I found it to be beneficial to approach the attorney you want to send work to ahead of time and work out some of the details. You probably do not want to be the middle-man for this transaction, my understanding is that independent paralegals are not allowed to set/negotiate pricing for attorneys and/or enter into the agreement for representation on behalf of the attorney. To cover your tail simply refer them to an attorney to which you have a high probability of getting the search from anyway. Maybe my approach is a little on the conservative side but I would rather go that route than to straddle any sort of line that could lead to UPL. You can also call the state bar with any questions to ensure that you are in the clear, the couple times I've called they are most helpful even though I'm not an attorney.
Great question!!
Best of luck.
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