{"id":4429,"date":"2004-04-17T14:29:07","date_gmt":"2004-04-17T18:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2004\/04\/17\/lawson-not-spooked-by-ghosts\/"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:58:52","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:58:52","slug":"lawson-not-spooked-by-ghosts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/04\/17\/lawson-not-spooked-by-ghosts\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawson Not Spooked by Ghosts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a1261'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><DIV dir=\"ltr\" style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">The venerable <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/www.netlawblog.com\/\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Jerry Lawson<\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">&nbsp;has joined our <A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/04\/15#a1238\">discussion<\/A> on ghost-written (&#8220;third-party-content-provider&#8221;) weblogs <FONT color=\"black\">&#8212; at his <\/FONT><\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/www.netlawblog.com\/archives\/000716.html\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" color=\"black\" size=\"2\"><EM>netlawblog<\/EM><\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Arial\" color=\"black\" size=\"2\"> and in <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/discuss\/msgReader$1257?mode=day\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" color=\"black\" size=\"2\">Comments<\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Arial\" color=\"black\" size=\"2\"> at this site..&nbsp; I&#8217;m always glad to have Jerry&#8217;s insights, although &#8212; as is <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/02\/14#a800\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" color=\"black\" size=\"2\">often<\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Arial\" color=\"black\" size=\"2\"> the case when it comes to <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/02\/16#a815\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" color=\"black\" size=\"2\">marketing<\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><FONT color=\"black\"> weblogs &#8212;<\/FONT> we seem to disagree again.<\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<UL><br \/>\n<LI><br \/>\n<DIV style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">I recommend reading Jerry&#8217;s <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/discuss\/msgReader$1257?mode=day\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Comment<\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"> and my <A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/discuss\/msgReader$1257?mode=day\">reply<\/A>, which focus on whether the definition of &#8220;weblog&#8221; is the crux of the problem.&nbsp; I think the issue is whether the term &#8220;weblog&#8221; is being used in a misleading way:&nbsp;&#8220;To my mind,<EM> <\/EM><A href=\"http:\/\/www.lexBlog.com\"><EM>lexBlog<\/EM><\/A>, for example, is offering to create and maintain websites that utilize the very easy-to-use and flexible &#8216;weblog technology.&#8217;&nbsp; But, if it is going to call the resulting website a weblog, it needs to make clear to lawyers buying the service that their results may differ greatly from the personal, traditional weblog, <EM>and<\/EM> let the visitor to the site know clearly and unambiguously when the purported owner-editor is not the actual producer of the content.&#8221;<\/FONT><\/DIV><\/LI><\/UL><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\" style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/media-cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/ethicalesq\/wrongwaysmN.jpg\" alt=\"wrong way smN\" \/>&nbsp;&nbsp; At <A href=\"http:\/\/www.netlawblog.com\/\"><EM>NetlawBlog<\/EM><\/A><EM>,<\/EM> Jerry asks (1) &#8220;Is it unethical for lawyers to use marketing material written by third parties on blogs?&#8221; and responds: <\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\" style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\"><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><EM>The first question is particularly easy: It is not necessarily unethical for lawyers to use materials written by third parties in their marketing efforts. Paper versions of such materials have been around for many years from <\/EM><\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/marketing.lp.findlaw.com\/consult\/toolsnews.html\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" color=\"#999966\" size=\"2\"><EM>a variety of vendors<\/EM><\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><EM>, including the <\/EM><\/FONT><A title=\"YourLaw Client Newsletter\" href=\"http:\/\/www.abanet.org\/publiced\/yourlaw\/\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" color=\"#999966\" size=\"2\"><EM>American Bar Association<\/EM><\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><EM>. If lawyers can use such material in the form of paper newsletters, then there is no apparent reason why they can&#8217;t be used on blogs.<\/EM><\/FONT><\/P><\/DIV><\/BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\" style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">He also asks: &#8220;(2) <FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Do blogs actually generate new clients?&#8221; and &#8220;(3) <\/FONT><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Are blog-for-lawyer vendors overstating their services&#8217; effectiveness?&#8221;<\/FONT>&nbsp;&nbsp; To my mind, his&nbsp;answers don&#8217;t get to the crux of the isues.&nbsp; Instead, they&nbsp;simply suggest that skeptics don&#8217;t understand how necessary weblogs will become to lawyer marketing, and then point to how easy weblog technology has made communication.<\/DIV><\/FONT><br \/>\n<P dir=\"ltr\" style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Here is the Comment that I left on Jerry&#8217;s website, in full:<\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P dir=\"ltr\" style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">I&#8217;m always a little surprised to find out that an ethical question I&#8217;ve raised is &#8220;particularly easy to answer.&#8221; You&#8217;ve made it so easy, I guess, by slightly changing the issue to a bland, general question &#8220;Is it unethical for lawyers to use marketing material written by third parties on blogs?&#8221; <\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<P dir=\"ltr\" style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Your wording leaves out a final clause that goes to the core of the ethical problem &#8212; something like &#8220;<B>without <I>acknowledging<\/I> that the weblog editor\/owner did not<\/B> find, choose, summarize, analyze, provide the commentary, or otherwise create the content presented on the site.&#8221; I think the issue of acknowledging the source of the content poses a far more difficult question (at least if you&#8217;re trying to justify the practice).<BR><\/FONT><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">For example, the <A href=\"http:\/\/www.abanet.org\/publiced\/yourlaw\/\">YourLaw newsletter<\/A> for clients that you have linked to at the ABA website clearly indicates that the AMA is the source, and the sample picture of an &#8220;imprinted&#8221; edition states &#8212; right under the masthead and easy to see &#8212; that the newsletter is &#8220;compliments of&#8221; the law firm sending the material.<\/FONT><\/BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P dir=\"ltr\" style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<P dir=\"ltr\" style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">You don&#8217;t seem to have answered question 2 or 3 at all (by, for example, showing a <I>connection<\/I> between the ability of weblogs to permit easy communication and the way prospective clients actually choose a lawyer), so I look forward to the further thoughts you have promised.<\/FONT><\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P dir=\"ltr\" style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/ethicalesq\/profyabutsmall.jpg\" alt=\"prof yabut small\" \/>&nbsp; As usual, we hope you&#8217;ll straighten us out!<\/FONT><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The venerable Jerry Lawson&nbsp;has joined our discussion on ghost-written (&#8220;third-party-content-provider&#8221;) weblogs &#8212; at his netlawblog and in Comments at this site..&nbsp; I&#8217;m always glad to have Jerry&#8217;s insights, although &#8212; as is often the case when it comes to marketing weblogs &#8212; we seem to disagree again. I recommend reading Jerry&#8217;s Comment and my reply, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-19r","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13883,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4429\/revisions\/13883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}