I’ve written a bit in the past about the differences between unified bars, like what exists in North Carolina, and voluntary state bar associations such as what we have in Tennessee. (If you are uninterested in clicking on either of those links, as a refresher, the fundamental difference is that unified bars require that anyone […]
Tag: First Amendment
This post is coming late in the week because this week marked the first two stops on the Ethics Roadshow for 2018. (If you are in or near Memphis and Nashville you can still register to come attend next week’s stops and hear about a potential recipe for ethical lawyering involving the 5 Cs of […]
With a strong tip of the metaphorical hat I never wear to Kim Ringler (a former President of APRL) who alerted many ethics lawyers to the news, I write today about a new ethics opinion from the New Jersey Committee on Attorney Advertising. In Opinion 45, issued less than a week ago, New Jersey has […]
I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak last week at a half-day seminar that was called a “#meToo CLE” and was focused on legal and ethical issues for lawyers in the environment that now exists after #meToo went viral. I was the only male speaker at the seminar and fully recognize that still […]
So, I don’t know if any of you have ever played HQ Trivia. In any session, they have between 500,000 and almost 2 million players, so statistically speaking, I guess there is a chance you have. While it has nothing to do with legal ethics, in order to understand the context of what follows, let […]
Nothing like the day after a holiday weekend to pose a difficult, potentially controversial, question, right? But when the holiday weekend in question is one to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this particular question is certainly topical. This is a post I have had rattling around inside of my […]
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A short update on Avvo ratings
You may recall, a while back, that I kvetched a bit here about my belief that Avvo’s rating system was less than a bona fide system. The primary focus of my argument centered on Avvo’s decision to assign numerical ratings to some lawyers even though those lawyers have never claimed their profiles. I then spent […]
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Advocating for attorney advertising.
So, back in August, I mentioned that I was going to have the opportunity to debate issues of lawyer advertising before an audience of top-notch Canadian lawyers in November. This post is something of a coda to that post as I want to, very briefly, say a word or two about that talk. It was, […]
So, I’m getting a very wonderful opportunity to participate in a debate about lawyer advertising in November in Nashville at The Advocates’ Society annual meeting. A throng of lovely Canadian attorneys will be traveling to our state capital for a two-day meeting. I say all of this for two reasons: Reason the first – today […]
A number of folks have already written about how New York has dealt another setback for Avvo Legal Services in the form of NY State Bar Ethics Op. 1132 which found that New York lawyers could not participate in Avvo Legal Services because payment of Avvo’s marketing fee amounts to payment for recommendation of services […]