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Thompson Hine LLP, a full-service business law firm with approximately 400 lawyers in 11 offices, was ranked number 1 in the category “Most innovative North American law firms: New working models” by The Financial Times and was 1 of 7 firms shortlisted for The American Lawyer’s inaugural Legal Services Innovation Award. The firm has been recognized by the National Law Journal as a Legal Technology Trailblazer and featured by Bloomberg for its innovative service delivery models, which drive accuracy and predictability. The firm’s commitment to innovation is embodied in Thompson Hine SmartPaTHTM – a smarter way to work – predictable, efficient and aligned with client goals. For more information, please visit ThompsonHine.com and ThompsonHine.com/SmartPaTH.

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<img style="max-width: 100%;height: auto;max-width: 100%;height: auto" loading="lazy" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-3293" src="https://www.thelawforlawyerstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/754/2017/05/Advertising-300x300.jpg" alt="Woman with megaphone and speech bubbles" width="300" height="300">Based on a perceived need to &ldquo;simplify and modernize&rdquo; lawyer advertising rules, the Commonwealth of <a href="http://www.vsb.org/site/news/item/SCV_amends_advertising_rules_2017_04">Virginia&rsquo;s supreme court has adopted </a>a new set of regulations that will make it easier for lawyers there to market their services.&nbsp; The slimmed-down <a href="http://www.courts.state.va.us/courts/scv/amendments/part_6_sect_ii_para_7_1_thru_7_5.pdf">rule</a>, effective July 1, will&nbsp;consist of a&nbsp;single provision that bars false or misleading communications, plus a revised rule on soliciting clients.
Trimmed-down rules
The new Virginia regulation pares its Rule 7.1 down to two sentences:&nbsp; one prohibiting &ldquo;false or misleading&rdquo; communications about the lawyer or the lawyer&rsquo;s services; and one defining &ldquo;false or misleading.&rdquo;
The changes jettison separate former rules on law firm names and communicating practice specialties, moving those subjects to a few succinct comments in the revised Rule 7.1.
The revised Rule 7.3, on soliciting clients, deletes a former provision that completely barred in-person solicitation of clients in personal injury and wrongful death cases, and now permits all in-person solicitation except when it involves &ldquo;harassment&rdquo; and the like, and when the prospective client has informed the lawyer that it&rsquo;s unwelcome.&nbsp;&nbsp;The Virginia rule&nbsp;gives lawyers more lee-way than does <a href="http://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/rule_7_3_direct_contact_with_prospective_clients.html">Model&nbsp;Rule 7.3</a>.
Less is more...
The new Virginia rules are patterned&nbsp;on the&nbsp;comprehensive proposals offered in <a href="http://aprl.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/APRL_2015_Lawyer-Advertising-Report_06-22-15.pdf">2015</a> and <a href="http://aprl.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/APRL_2016_Lawyer-Advertising-Supplemental-Report_04-26-16_w-Attach.pdf">2016 </a>by the <a href="https://aprl.net/">Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers</a>, which&nbsp;has urged the ABA to retire most of the Model Rules on&nbsp;lawyer advertising.&nbsp; The Old Dominion is the first jurisdiction to embrace that approach.
In the ABA/BNA Lawyer&rsquo;s Manual on Professional Conduct, the chair of the APRL committee that originated the revamp proposal, Mark Tuft, <a href="https://www.bna.com/virginia-first-streamline-n73014450472/">is quoted</a> as saying that reacting to new modes of advertising like Facebook and Snapchat with more regulation is counterproductive.
&ldquo;Virginia is the first state that has recognized that greater regulation in an effort to respond to advertising in the electronic age is not the way to go,&rdquo; Tuft told the Lawyers&rsquo; Manual.
(For more comment on the Virginia rule reboot, see John Marshall College of Law Professor Alberto Bernabe&rsquo;s <a href="http://bernabepr.blogspot.com/2017/04/virginia-to-amend-rules-regarding.html">recent blog post</a>:&nbsp; he questions whether the term &ldquo;misleading&rdquo; can be &mdash; well, misleading.&nbsp; And Memphis lawyer Brian Faughn (who&rsquo;s also an APRL board member) <a href="http://faughnanonethics.com/virginias-revised-lawyer-advertising-rules-big-win-for-aprls-effort-to-streamline-the-advertising-rules/">weighs in </a>as well.)
New Model Rules &mdash; maybe
In response to the APRL&rsquo;s proposals, the ABA&rsquo;s standing Ethics Committee convened a working group to review the call for an advertising rule revamp; the working group plans to make its recommendations to the Ethics Committee next month, according to the Lawyers&rsquo; Manual.
The&nbsp; ABA&rsquo;s deliberations are at their beginning stages, and it would take some time before&nbsp;any changes made their way into the&nbsp;Model Rules on advertising.&nbsp; And from there, state supreme courts would need to carry out their own vetting processes before&nbsp;possibly adopting&nbsp;any ABA model&nbsp;into&nbsp;a state&rsquo;s lawyer conduct rules.
But following Virginia&rsquo;s example, it is possible that states won&rsquo;t necessarily wait for the ABA, and instead might consider &mdash; or even embrace &mdash;&nbsp;the APRL&rsquo;s approach directly.
Is it good for the profession?
The way we&nbsp;market&nbsp;our legal services is a subject that can generate strong opinions &mdash;&nbsp;but however you feel about it,&nbsp;lawyer advertising is here to stay.&nbsp; (Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U.S. 350 (1977).)&nbsp; The public now gets its information about legal services in a&nbsp;multitude of ways that were never dreamed of in 1983, when the ABA promulgated its Model Rules.&nbsp; The current rules in most jurisdictions are cumbersome and&nbsp;over-complicated, yet&nbsp;do nothing to&nbsp;make lawyer marketing dignified or&nbsp;in keeping with a learned profession.&nbsp; (For example, how about putting your firm advertising on a <a href="http://www.fishmanmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Jay+Friedheim+condom+matchbook+.jpg">condom package</a>?&nbsp;Or calling yourself &ldquo;<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SxJd8bS4ZLA/TtkJs0zTPbI/AAAAAAAAPc0/xSRrU5TPATY/s1600/Gorilla.jpg">The Gorilla</a>&ldquo;?)&nbsp; We might as well move toward a streamlined set of regulations that&nbsp;will at least make it easier to communicate with the public about what we have to offer.

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Ethics

Legal Ethics, Professional Responsibility and the Business of Law

Virginia simplifies and modernizes lawyer advertising rules; who’s next?