I think this is a form of boilerplate for acknowledging that no lawyer will want to give you legal advice without a more detailed phone call, and the acknowledgement that a non-lawyer can’t really offer legal advice.
The way I handle this is to ask “how strongly would you be encouraging me to get a lawyer right now?”
I'd think the same. That's why in some law forums you are expected to write your questions in the manner of "suppose the hypothetical case that person X did Y, ..." instead of "I did Y, ...". So people are only talking about a theoretical case, and not give actual legal advice.
> To be clear I'm not looking for legal advice, just opinions from people who may have been in a similar situation
I'm going to go ahead and say they are going to dig themselves deeper in the hole.