That was the day when the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in Bates against the Arizona State Bar Association, essentially overturning the prohibitions against advertising by lawyers. If this surprises you, it wasn't until 1977, in the case of Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 WS. In Bates, the Supreme Court of the United States held that lawyers' advertising was a commercial discourse entitled to protection under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution Attorney advertising flourished in the 19th century, with advertisements regularly appearing in sections of classifieds from newspapers.
Legal advertising is the advertising of lawyers (lawyers), solicitors and law firms. Legal marketing is a broader term that refers to advertising and other practices, including customer relations, social media, and public relations. When Adler opened his own firm in 1973, he was not allowed to advertise for new customers. But that all changed four years later.
Lawyers can advertise, but they must follow legal rules of publicity and ethical obligations. American Bar Association (ABA) Rule 7.2 on Communications Concerning an Attorney's Services specifies that a lawyer can communicate information about his services through any platform, but there are rules about what he or she can share. Since the Supreme Court ruled that lawyers have a constitutional right to publicize, he said, the burden falls on those seeking to limit those rights to establish the necessity and reasonableness of the ban. It wasn't until the 1970s that the Court ruled that so-called commercial speech or speech that does nothing more than propose a commercial transaction was entitled to some degree of First Amendment protection.
Regardless of the medium you use to advertise, the first thing you need to do before implementing any marketing or advertising strategy is to know and follow the attorneys' advertising rules and responsibilities that apply to you. Legal marketing has been allowed in England and Wales since 1986, when the Law Society of England and Wales first allowed lawyers to advertise. ABA Rule 7.3 highlights that lawyers cannot request their services in person from a target person if the lawyer's goal is to obtain financial gain for the lawyer or law firm. On the other hand, the governors of the ABA and its working group on lawyer advertisements were warned that a restrictive approach would reinforce the image that lawyers are more interested in feathering their own nests than in helping the public.
As more and more lawyers use digital communication to connect with new potential clients, they need to be up to date with the lawyer advertising rules that apply to them so you don't accidentally break them.
