Public Citizen submitted a detailed set of Comments to the Kentucky Bar association’s commission on advertising rules. A PC Press Release, dated June 2, 2003, announced and described the filing, with links to the 29-page (pdf.) submission, and to letters sent by PC on May 30th to antitrust officials at the Department Justice and FTC asking for investigation of the rules.
Public Citizen scrutinizes each of the proposed restrictions on advertising, demonstrating in great detail that the new rules would prevent truthful and nonmisleading advertising and stifle competition — resulting in violations of both the First Amendment and antitrust laws. Relevant legal precedent are cited throughout. ethicalEsq? covered this topic in a posting on June 11, 2003.
Public Citizen is especially concerned that the new rules will harm plaintiff’s attorneys for whom television advertising is crucial. This excerpt summarize’s PC’s conclusions:
The portions of the Commission’s proposed regulations to which we object share certain common features. They forbid attorneys from using advertisements that contain statements that are truthful and can be presented in ways that are not deceptive or misleading. They assume that consumers are ignorant, naive, or stupid and will draw irrational inferences when presented with accurate statements about legal services.
They proscribe types of advertising that employ techniques that are conventional in commercial advertising generally and/or in legitimate marketing by attorneys, including attorneys in large firms catering to corporate defendants. And they are likely to have their greatest impact on attorneys who need to market their practices through mass advertising and are less capable of relying on other means of conveying the same information to prospective clients through other means (such as word-of-mouth references passed among well-connected corporate clients).
The cumulative effect of the proposed regulations would greatly magnify their individual flaws. Collectively, the regulations would result in the virtual prohibition of television advertising by attorneys that is interesting visually and in its substantive content. The regulations would handcuff attorneys who seek to employ television commercials by virtually requiring that the commercials be dull, ineffective, uninformative, and unpersuasive. The underlying impetus appears to be not protection of consumers but hostility to advertisers.
(thanks to Bert Foer at the American Antitrust Institute for pointing me to this item)
ethicalEsq?ethicalEsq?ethicalEsq?
Thanks to CAFFMONSTER for mentioning this blawg today. Their blawg is definitely running on e-caffeine.