Florida may have a lot of onerous ad regulation, and it may sometimes take a lawsuit to affect change in the Sunshine State, but they’ve made a change for the better today: In settling a suit brought by Florida lawyer Joel Rothman and Public Citizen, Florida has agreed to exempt online directories such as Avvo from most of its ad rules.

Last year, the Florida Bar held that members may run afoul of the state’s prohibition on testimonial advertising by having client reviews on Avvo. Problem is, attorneys don’t control the client reviews on Avvo. Part of Avvo’s mission of transparency in the legal industry is ensuring that clients ultimately decide if reviews appear, and what those reviews say.

What’s great about this settlement is that it goes beyond the obvious – that lawyers can’t be held responsible for reviews left for them on Avvo – and sets forth the principle that directory profiles are information provided at the request of a potential client. Such communication is exempt from the vast majority of Florida’s attorney advertising rules, including limitations on testimonial advertising and referring to past results. Result? Florida lawyers need no longer worry about consumer opinion or otherwise-truthful information that appears in their Avvo profiles. We congratulate all of the parties involved on reaching this commonsense solution.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 2:38 pm by Josh King, VP of Business Development and General Counsel and is filed under Josh King Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.