Florida lawyers, your Byzantine and largely extra-constitutional scheme of attorney advertising rules is going to get even uglier. The Florida Bar is poised to issue guidelines implementing that state’s recent Supreme Court edict around the applicability of the ad rules to attorney websites. In addition to requiring that users affirmatively accept a disclaimer before visiting the inside pages of an attorney’s website, the guidelines will also specify that social media sites are also subject to the rules. Wait, there’s more – Facebook friend requests, invitations to connect on LinkedIn (and maybe even following someone on Twitter?) will be considered impermissible in-person solicitation.

Does the Florida Bar Standing Committee on Advertising not take counsel on First Amendment issues? Unless the guidelines are very narrowly focused on just the most blatant advertising-based uses of social media, they’re haven’t a chance of passing constitutional muster. If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that these changes are significant enough that some attorneys are sure to seek federal court help in striking them down.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 4:58 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.