Bar Group Removes ‘Prefer a Jewish Lawyer!’ Ad After Jewish Lawyer Objects
The Jewish American Bar Association has only three members, but it managed to get a lot of publicity with an ad on a bus bench near a Florida courthouse. The ad has a number for its referral service and implores readers to “Prefer a Jewish Lawyer!”
Now the group founded by enterprising social worker Lisa Spitzer has taken down the ad, but the controversy remains, the Sun Sentinel reports. Spitzer defended the ad, telling the newspaper, “If an all-women’s medical group posted an ad ‘Prefer a woman gynecologist?,’ would that be offensive?”
Blogging lawyer David Shulman, who is himself Jewish, says he was offended. “How could someone so blatantly and openly trot out ethnic stereotypes?” he wrote on his blog, South Florida Estate Planning Law. The ad, placed on a bench across from the condo where he lives, spurred him to do some online research, where he learned the group was a for-profit referral service calling itself a bar association.
“I want clients to prefer David Shulman,” he wrote. “Not necessarily a ‘Jewish Lawyer.’ “
The Florida Bar’s advertising committee is now reviewing the ad. If the bar finds a problem, the three lawyers who are members of the referral service could be held responsible, bar spokeswoman Francine Walker told the newspaper.
