I have written in the past about the fact that I am fortunate to be the Chair of the Tennessee Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility. Because our committee is currently beginning a process of chewing over whether to try to recommend changes to the advertising rules in Tennessee, I’ve been trying to pay closer attention to developments in other states. Specifically, trying to pay closer attention to whether the revisions to the ABA Model Rules inspired by the work of APRL are moving the needle in the correct direction.
Long time readers of this space will know that my long-espoused view is that the only real rule needed in terms of lawyer advertising is a prohibition on false or misleading communication. The ABA Model Rules have moved closer – but not all the way of course — to that kind of approach.
Today’s post is about the fact that the Texas Committee on Disciplinary Rules and Referenda has proposed revisions to Texas’s ethics rules on advertising that are open for public comment until March 1, 2019.
You can read the proposed revisions here.
The short version is that these proposed revisions seem like a very positive development in a few respects as to regulation on lawyer advertising. The biggest positive is that these changes would replace wholesale the kind of improper categorization of certain statements that can be made truthfully (like comparison of one lawyer’s services to another or discusses past results obtained for clients) currently housed in Texas’s Rule 7.02(a) with a revised Rule 7.01 that isn’t perfect in terms of just prohibiting actually false or misleading communications but is better.
Unfortunately, the other piece of the short version is that the Texas revisions would still perpetuate a very pernicious and unnecessary barrier to speech in the form of filing requirements and payments in the form of filing fees for any advertisements that are not limited to certain types of “pre-approved” information.
The Texas proposed revisions would do this by continuing to carry forward in a revised Rule 7.04 the following requirement:
A lawyer shall file with the staff of the Advertising Review Committee of the State Bar of Texas, no later than the date of dissemination of an advertisement of legal services via public media, or the date of a solicitation communication sent by any means, including social media, for the purpose of obtaining professional employment:
(1) a copy of the advertisement or solicitation (including packaging if applicable) in the form in which it appeared or will appear upon dissemination;
(2) a completed lawyer application advertising and solicitation communication application; and
(3) payment to the State Bar of Texas of a fee set by the Board of Directors.
For context, currently the fee is set at $100. You can review the relatively invasive application form that is required and all of its bells and whistles here. In reading it you will also learn the cute part where if more than one lawyer in separate firms is involved in the same advertisement they are still each required to separately submit applications and pay multiple $100 fees.
The proposed revision would also exempt certain limited types of communications from these requirements as long as they only contain the “vanilla” categories of information pre-approved by the regulators.
Such a regulatory regime does not exist for any reason other than to fundamentally discourage advertising., should not be tolerated, and pointlessly mars any progress the Texas proposal otherwise offers.