The debate over online advertising for lawyers gets to the heart of the profession’s reluctance to embrace technology. While websites, blogs, and social media have become important aspects of all professions, lawyers have been notoriously slow to embrace the new forums of information sharing and client outreach. State bar associations have even set regulations against social media use among lawyers drawn along similar lines as the advertising restrictions.
When the Florida Bar Association, already among the most restrictive bodies in the nation, announced last month that it would strengthen guidelines for online advertising, eight of the state’s largest law firms cried foul, announcing their intention to sue the Florida Bar. The proposed new rules would prohibit the publication of testimonials, case results, and audio or video content they deemed “deceptive, misleading, manipulative,” or confusing. The eight law firms said these new rules crossed a line–that altering their websites would require thousands of man hours and cost a fortune.
In a post for the Rainmaker Blog skewering the Florida bar suggestions, Stephen Fairley writes that while these new rules would be inconvenient for major players, they would devastate small firms.
I recently spoke with Diane Karpman, a legal ethics guru from California, who came to the same conclusion about legal advertising rules as Fairley–from a slightly different path.
Advertising is necessary for poor clients without access to big-name referrals, she says. Without it, “the white-shoed partners in the multi-storied buildings are going to prevail,” Karpman says. “At some point you have to say that people need access to attorneys, even if that means releasing restrictions on attorney advertising.”
Karpman feels that such stringent regulations miss the point of social media altogether. “Every state has Byzantine regulations regarding lawyer advertising,” she said, noting that common guidelines boil down to an obligation to make statements that are true, accurate, and not confusing. “But these rules fail to take into consideration things like Twitter. If you only have 140 characters, you just can’t comply with all the requirements.”
Avvo general counsel Josh King suggested that the Florida lawsuit could prompt state bar associations to scale back regulations, where websites would be considered “information provided at the request of a client,” or even scrap advertising rules altogether, since such restrictions “routinely flout the First Amendment, create uncertainty in their membership and drive the cost of legal services higher.”
As a strong supporter of social media as a forum to boost client interaction, Karpman echoes King’s assertion that additional restrictions could raise constitutional questions. “The type of regulation in Florida is just overkill. I almost think it’s unconstitutional because it’s a prior restraint to freedom of speech,” she says.
Like King, Karpman also predicts that state bar associations will begin to embrace new technologies and ease their ethics restrictions as they begin to see the potential for social media and the web as a whole to strengthen the legal profession.
But this debate serves as an important reminder that even when legal social media use becomes widespread, lawyers must maintain the ethics standards that have been commonly accepted for decades before the advent of the web. Otherwise, the more restrictive regulations of online communication might actually be warranted.
About the Author: Ben Buchwalter is Director of Client Outreach for GJEL Accident Attorneys in northern California. Before joining GJEL, Ben studied political science at Haverford College and worked as a writer and researcher for Mother Jones Magazine and Talking Points Memo. Ben enjoys skiing, public transportation, and television detective dramas. Find GJEL at www.gjel.com, the blog at www.gjel.com/blog or on Twitter as @GJELblogger.
