Following up despite it not being Friday – Tennessee advertising changes

So, sort of as promised, or at least in substantial compliance with a prior promise, I wanted to elaborate a bit more on the news out of Tennessee that we have adopted revisions to our lawyer advertising rules and talk a bit about what is now a new, pending proposal put out directly by the Tennessee Supreme Court.

As to the changes that were adopted, I scooped my own blog by articulating most of those more detailed thoughts in this piece for Bloomberg Law put together by Melissa Heelan.

The one topic I didn’t really mention in that interaction was the fact that the revisions also create a new exception to allow in-person solicitation directed at “a person who routinely uses for business purposes the type of legal services offered by the lawyer.” This is a category slightly different than what the TBA had proposed to the Court but still an improvement on the existing rule.

As to the Court’s new, separate proposal for how to revise Tennessee’s treatment of “intermediary organizations,” the TBA had proposed a “surgical” revision that simply would have removed a “catch all” category from how the concept of an “intermediary organization” is defined. The TBA did not seek to propose any changes to any other aspect of the regulatory structure that requires such organizations to register with the Court.

The Court now has. It has proposed for public comment a revision that would delete Tenn. Sup. Ct. R. 44 in its entirety and that would make some significant revisions to RPC 7.6 itself but that would still leave something of a “catch all” in the definition, though not as broad as the current rule and a few other revisions to the ethics rule portions. Importantly, because the proposal removes the requirements of registration and some other obstacles, what it leaves is a rule that largely places the burden on individual lawyers to make certain they are only doing business with entities that conduct themselves in a fashion that is consistent with the lawyer’s own ethical obligations. The proposed revised rule also requires transparency from the intermediary organization in terms of the furnishing of information to those who might use its services to find a lawyer. Speaking of transparency, the proposal is transparently inspired by a similar proposal recently adopted in North Carolina. You can read the full court proposal at the link below.

Given the removal of the more onerous requirements of Rule 44, this proposal seems worthy of public support as it would seem to make it much more likely that entities that can offer “matching” services that Tennessee lawyers and consumers of legal services alike are interested in using will do so in an open, above-board fashion.

In sum, the proposed revised version of RPC 7.6, paired with the deletion of Rule 44, would appear to be a rule more likely to be complied with rather than ignored.

If you are interested in submitting any public comment to the Court, you have until November 30, 2021 to do so.