{"id":4769,"date":"2004-03-22T21:59:55","date_gmt":"2004-03-23T01:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2004\/03\/22\/ads-inciting-litigation-banne"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:58:55","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:58:55","slug":"ads-inciting-litigation-banned-in-florida-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/03\/22\/ads-inciting-litigation-banned-in-florida-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Ads Inciting Litigation Banned in Florida Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a1083'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Maybe we need laws against frivolous legislation.&nbsp;&nbsp; Tomorrow, the Florida Legislature may consider a bill that would make it illegal to advertise in &#8220;a manner that solicits legal business for a profit by urging a person to consider bringing legal action against another.&#8221;&nbsp; <\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<UL><br \/>\n<LI><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Yep: &#8220;Thou Shalt Not Incite Litigation!&#8221; I don&#8217;t know if inciting mediation&nbsp;is okay.<\/FONT><\/LI><\/UL><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/ethicalesq\/GarbagePailpointgray.jpg\" alt=\"garbage pail point gray\" \/>&nbsp; As explained in an <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/www.law.com\/jsp\/printerfriendly.jsp?c=LawArticle&amp;t=PrinterFriendlyArticle&amp;cid=1079977519224\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">article<\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"> from the <EM>Miami Daily Business Review <\/EM>(&#8220;Fla. Lawmakers May Vote Today to Curb Lawyer Advertising,&#8221; by Matthew Haggman, 03-23-2004; via Law.com <\/FONT><A href=\"http:\/\/www.law.com\/newswire\/\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Daily NewsWire<\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">), the legislation was passed by the House Judiciary Committee last week, and <\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><EM>It defines &#8220;solicit&#8221; as meaning &#8220;to entreat, request or urge another to use the services of an attorney or a law firm.&#8221; <BR><\/EM><BR>&#8220;The bill gives the Florida attorney general&#8217;s office standing, along with The Florida Bar, to bring a complaint against a lawyer or law firm for violating the provision.&#8221; [It proposes a civil penalty of $1,000 for the initial offense and $2,000 for each subsequent offense.]<\/FONT><\/DIV><\/BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">The bill&#8217;s primary sponsor is state Rep. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, &#8220;an attorney who has handled personal injury cases. He argues that The Florida Bar has failed to effectively police its members when it comes to advertising.&#8221;&nbsp;&nbsp; The bill, like a similar one covering medical negligence cases,&nbsp;asserts that attorney advertising has &#8220;created a crisis in this state&#8217;s judicial system.&#8221;&nbsp;&nbsp; The article notes that &#8220;the sponsors offer no empirical evidence for that controversial claim.&#8221; <BR><\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><\/FONT>&nbsp;<\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">The lengthy&nbsp;article&nbsp;details&nbsp;some of the constitutional, regulatory and political issues raised by the bill.&nbsp; It notes that &#8220;Elizabeth Clark Tarbert, the Bar&#8217;s ethics counsel, said her organization had no comment on the legislation.&#8221;<\/FONT>&nbsp;&nbsp;<FONT face=\"Arial\"> It wouldn&#8217;t be fair or fun for <EM>skepticalEsq<\/EM> to lampoon this legislation &#8212; it&#8217;s just too easy.&nbsp; I wonder&nbsp;what <A href=\"http:\/\/www.overlawyered.com\">Walter or Ted<\/A> has to say.&nbsp; <A href=\"http:\/\/riverbendlaw.typepad.com\/notes_from_the_legal_unde\/\">Evan<\/A>&#8216;s take should also be interesting.<\/FONT><\/DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><br \/>\n<UL><br \/>\n<LI>The Florida ethics Rules&nbsp;for Lawyer&nbsp;Advertising are perhaps already the most restrictive in the nation.&nbsp; <A href=\"http:\/\/www.flabar.org\/tfb\/TFBLawReg.nsf\/E0F40AF2C23904C785256709006A3713\/F0F34CEAE87853CC85256B2F006C8848?OpenDocument\">See<\/A> Rule 4-7.1 to 4-7.11.<\/LI><\/UL><br \/>\n<P><EM><FONT color=\"red\"><STRONG>Update<\/STRONG> (03-23-04):<\/FONT>&nbsp; <\/EM><A href=\"http:\/\/www.overlawyered.com\/\">Walter Olson<\/A>, wrote to me via email, that he was&nbsp;alarmed to see Florida lawyers arguing that only the judicial branch of government can regulate lawyers.&nbsp; I agree with W.O. that such a position (besides being incorrect as a matter of law) will likely make lawyers look like an arrogant super-caste,&nbsp;asserting&nbsp; the sole right to police themselves.. <BR><BR><\/P><\/FONT><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe we need laws against frivolous legislation.&nbsp;&nbsp; Tomorrow, the Florida Legislature may consider a bill that would make it illegal to advertise in &#8220;a manner that solicits legal business for a profit by urging a person to consider bringing legal action against another.&#8221;&nbsp; Yep: &#8220;Thou Shalt Not Incite Litigation!&#8221; I don&#8217;t know if inciting mediation&nbsp;is [&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-4769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-1eV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4769","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=4769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13915,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4769\/revisions\/13915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}