The Business of Law – Marketing and Business for Enterprising Attorneys

Sometimes you’ve got to read past the headlines.A recent example is the case in Federal Court in Louisiana having to do with legal advertising. Here’s the issue in a nutshell as reported by Forbes: essentially, the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board got the Louisiana Supreme Court to adopt new rules governing attorney advertisements.

The new rules would take affect on Oct 1, and would place various limits on advertising including the use of mottos, celebrity endorsements, re-enactments and client testimonials. The rules also would have required online ads to be pre-approved to be sure they were not misleading.

A group of attorneys sued claiming that the rules were unconstitutional and violated their freedom of expression.

How did the court rule? That depends on which headline you read:

Judge Upholds Limits on Lawyers Ads blared the Associated Press story on August 3^rd.

While Wendy Davis over at the Daily Online Examiner Blog wrote:Onerous Regs for Web Ads Ruled Unconstitutional.

So you might ask: Who won the case?

(continue reading…)