Public Citizen Takes on LA Bar
Public Citizen has filed another lawsuit challenging restrictive attorney advertising rules, this time in Louisiana. The Louisiana advertising rules which have yet to take effect are, according to Public Citizen, “among the most restrictive in the country.” Public Citizen has successfully challenged New York’s advertising rules (a decision that is currently on appeal) and has a pending lawsuit against the Florida Bar advertising rules.
What could Public Citizen have against rules designed to prevent sleazy attorney advertising? For starters, these rules are typically overreaching, and often descend into surreal levels of detail when describing what can and can’t be done in attorney ads. By broadly prohibiting all sorts of common advertising techniques, these rules ensure that most attorney marketing will be a bland mush, useless to both attorneys trying the set themselves apart and consumers trying to find the right lawyer. Such restrictions may also, as the Federal Trade Commission contends, actually even raise the prices consumers pay for legal services.
So why not just proscribe ads that are false and deceptive, and let attorneys advertise within those broad parameters? The fact of the matter is that the filter of “false and deceptive” advertising will capture virtually all ads that may cause consumer harm, while providing the greatest amount of information and protecting the constitutional rights of attorneys to commercial speech.
The problem is that state bar regulators, while justifiably concerned about consumer harm, are at least equally concerned with “preserving the nobility of the profession,” or some such thing. So they continue to enact misguided, overreaching regulations such as those in Louisiana. The good news is that most of these regulations are unconstitutional (commercial speech being entitled to First Amendment protection so long as it is not deceptive, after all) kudos to the folks at Public Citizen for taking the issue to the courts for resolution.
