Life Coaching and Psychology Licensure

There are two legal issues that tend to come up in my clientele with psychology.

One is the unauthorized practice of psychology, people who are practicing psychology, but they don’t know it.

Who are we talking about? Life coaches.

Now, I know that there are hundreds of thousands of life coaches out there and that there are organizations that grant credentials to life coaching. Nonetheless, I’ve seen several instances where the Board of Psychology has come down hard on practitioners for the unlicensed practice of psychology. The lines are not always clear. Especially where people are not lawyers, they can somewhat innocently step over a trip wire.

So, if you’re doing any type of life coaching, it’s important to have dos and don’ts. It’s important to have legal counsel to make sure that you can practice in as compliant and legally safe way as possible and that you don’t communicate with your clients, whether through a workshop, or through email, or by phone, or in person, or otherwise, in a way that could land you in an unwanted Board of Psychology criminal investigation.