This is a bit of a rant. And it certainly isn’t giving any legal advice. Nor does reading this create any kind of attorney-client relationship. Furthermore, I don’t claim to be an expert on Texas Legal Ethics, and have not been granted any special certification of ethics by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, the Pope, or President Trump. And there are no fees attached, but if there were, I wouldn’t publish them because ethics.
Advertising rules are hard
The Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct are hard to follow, and I have a law degree. I’ve spent my day reading through them and trying to make sense of the requirements. They are pretty non-committal on what is and isn’t required. The only true mandate that I can 100% say I believe to be objectively obtainable is the one that requires attorneys to send the Bar $100 every time they want to make a new advertisement. The rest is really debatable.
Rule 7 of the TDRPC talks about advertising. Summing it up, it says:
- Don’t chase ambulances (or, more generally, target clients because something has happened to them that they need a lawyer for).
- Be honest (do not be deceptive by commission or omission).
- Don’t say you “specialize” unless you have paid for your certification of Specialization (to the Texas Bar).
- Send the bar $100 each time you want to create a new advertisement*.
*Blogs are probably not advertising. And “Tombstone Advertising”, ads that just have name, address, practice areas, and other identifying information are exempted from the $100 fee.
That is a huge simplification, but the rules have made me bitter
The rules have lots of if this then thats in them, and talk about required disclaimers without ever actually saying what the required disclaimers are, and constantly refer you to other sections of the rule. I reread the rules multiple times, and got some secondary interpretations of them, and from what I can tell I am doing everything right with my advertising. That said, I don’t like that the rules are as hard to follow as they are, because it seems like this should be easier. I just want to get clients.
Required disclaimers
Like I said, the rules mention a need for required disclaimers, without explicitly saying what the required disclaimers are. That said, I’ve been able to pick up the following:
- Disclose the location of your principal office.
- Disclose a lawyer who is in charge of your advertising (probably you).
- If you aren’t a specialist but advertise a practice area, maybe disclaim that you aren’t a specialist.
- If you commit to fees in your advertising, you have to stick with the fees you committed to.
- If you know at the outset of the advertising that there is a likelihood that you are going to refer work out that you get from the ads, you need to let the readers know.
- If you talk about past results, disclaim that your past successes don’t predict the outcomes of future cases.
- If your advertisement is in another language, then your disclaimers should be in the same other language.
This is a major simplification of the rules and if you just follow the rules above without actually reading rule 7 fourteen times, you are probably going to get disbarred. But that is a decent summary for rant purposes.
The purpose of the rules is to protect the public
The idea behind the majority of these rules, apart from the “send $100 to your Bar if you want to advertise” rule, is that we sophisticated, unscrupulous lawyers need these rules opposed upon us to protect the unsuspecting public from our nefarious ways. And I get that. We have a whole lot of training and experience in crafting a message out of the truth that fits our needs, so I understand how we could use advertising to really dupe the consumers. And I am all for protecting the consumers, without them we don’t have anything to do, like vampires and villagers.
That said, I think that the “send $100” rule is a little bit ridiculous. We are expected to follow the rules, because if we don’t it is a disciplinary violation, so having us submit our advertisements to the Bar for review seems a bit like the Bar doesn’t trust us. I, personally, am going to do my best to comply with the advertising rules because I am pretty pleased that I have a law license and don’t want to do anything to jeopardize it.
So, that means for now I am going to keep sending my lawyer advertising to the Bar for review, $100 at a time…