By Bob Gero
President, The Gero Group and LMA Education Chair
On a sunny and bright Thursday in January, an overflow audience of law firm marketers and LMA members gathered in the large and beautiful conference center at White & Williams’ Center City offices to witness the enlightening presentation of “Tiptoe Through the Minefield: Hot Topics & Trends in Lawyer Marketing & Advertising Ethics.”
Presented by Micah Buchdahl, Esquire, founder and president of Morristown, NJ-based HTMLawyers, a legal marketing consulting firm. The membership came away with renewed appreciation for the need to understand that complying with all states’ rules requires meticulous attention to the nuances and interpretations of those rules.
Some of the key points Micah covered include:
- In general, the advertising and ethics rules as they are written today are not “built” for today’s media, i.e., SEO, APPS, QR,etraffic, Social Media. Using new media will force us into untested waters.
- The growth of blogs has resulted in confusion and inconsistent interpretation of the current rules. How do blogs get regulated? Are they ads or opinions? Are disclaimers required? Micah cited a current case in Virginia testing the current ethics rules.
- The guidelines on how to distinguish real rankings and honors from those that might be spurious continue to be a challenge.
- Caution is required when considering using various venues of social media such as Groupon offerings, auction bidding, lead generation practices and listings. One must be careful of unknowingly creating a client-attorney relationship through these tools.
- When new laterals come on board, be sure to state that the attorney’s experience may have been earned elsewhere before posting information regarding his or her previous matters and experience on your website.
Micah could have easily continued for the remainder of the afternoon, however following a very interesting Q & A session, we adjourned. It is apparent that as legal marketing and business development continues its growth and importance to the practice of law, the ethics rules will continue to evolve in ways that can dramatically affect how LMA-ers perform.