Legal Ethics
New Attorney Ad Rules for La. Lawyers as of Dec. 1
Posted Jul 24, 2008, 05:14 pm CST
By Martha Neil
New advertising standards for Louisiana lawyers are slated to go into effect on December 1, but some practitioners feel they could still using a bit of tweaking.
For the first time, the new rules approved by the Louisiana Supreme Court will require prior approval of lawyer advertising, by a Louisiana state bar committee, if lawyers want to be protected against possible disciplinary action. However, that isn't what is troubling those who see issues in the new advertising standards, reports the Times-Picayune.
Instead, some lawyers are concerned about the extent to which standards seemingly could be extended beyond misleading ads to apply to questions of personal taste and free speech. "Background sounds," for instance, are reportedly banned under the new rules.
Morris Bart, a New Orleans personal injury lawyer known for his "One Call, That's All" slogan, is among those troubled by the new rules.
"While I and every other attorney would agree that commercials can't be false, deceptive and misleading, the difficulty comes in that you can't regulate the style of ads; that gets into a matter of taste, a very subjective issue," he says.
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Comments
Posted by kay sieverding - 3 months, 3 weeks, 6 days, 11 hours, 41 minutes ago
What do you think about advertisements in the form of resumes published on law firm web sites? For instance, I sued the Steamboat Pilot for defamation. They purchased liability insurance from Mutual Insurance Limited of Bermuda, which hired Faegre & Benson. Faegre & Benson published on their web site that they won on statute of limitations and did not disclose that fraudulent statements were reprinted two months before their client was sued and that it did not file an answer. Then the Pilot’s employee advised me that their lawyer said they can print anything they want about me and there is nothing they can do to stop it. This was supported by Faegre’s itemized bills which show they discussed my take down requests with the publisher,who then expanded publication of the fraudulent statements. I sued Faegre and they published on their web site that they secured “an injunction against repetitive litigation” and a “contempt of court citation”. Faegre actually had me put in jail for 5 months without a criminal conviction or a finding that I disrupted a hearing. There was no U.S. Attorney involved in the prosecution. Should lawyers be able to advertise that they can have natural citizens put in jail for engaging in non fraudulent use of the courts ? I can’t believe that corporations and law firms now have the de facto right to incarcerate U.S. citizens in order to avoid a jury trial.