A Quick Glance at the new New York State Attorney Advertising Regulations
Today the New York State Unified Court System announced the new attorney advertising regulations, which will go into effect February 1, 2007. Here are the details. In a previous post I complained about the draft rules, in particular the incredibly broad definition of advertising that would have (arguably) captured academic publications and blog entries such as this one. I am glad to see that reason prevailed. The new definition of advertisement reads as follows:
“Advertisement” means any public or private communication made by or on behalf of a lawyer or law firm about that lawyer or law firm’s services, the primary purpose of which is for the retention of the lawyer or law firm. It does not include communications to existing clients or other lawyers.The twice qualified subject matter of the communication (by a lawyer about that lawyer’s services) coupled with a narrow intent requirement (retention of that lawyer as the primary purpose), should broadly exempt all but clear advertisments. Also, from what I can tell after skimming the redline, the somewhat arbitrary (and unintentionally comical) restrictions on the use of symbols (half-naked goddess with scales = good; courthouse = bad) have been limited, even though the presiding justices could not resist the temptation to legislate rules for good web design (pop-ups = unethical). The focus of the new rules is less on enforcing good manners and more on requiring non-deceptive communication, which is clearly a huge improvement over the draft rules.
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