New York Bar May Crack Down on Blogging Lawyers

An anonymous reader writes "While you might not guess it from watching late night TV, advertisements by lawyers are regulated by a web of regulations intended to protect potential clients from deceptive claims in such ads. Generally, these rules require lawyers to submit their ads to a review board, often with a filing fee paid with each new advertisement. The New York bar has proposed new rules which would define blogging as advertising. Should these rules be enacted, any New York lawyer who blogs on any legal topic in New York would be required to submit any new blog post to the New York Bar for review. For New York lawyers who write frequently updated blogs, this could force them to make multiple (and potentially expensive) reports to the New York Bar every single day."

Comments

Re:Who cares

[Mr. X]

This is a mandatory bar that all lawyers admitted in New York State must join.

Re:Who cares

[damsa]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Bar_As sociation, In New York there is no mandatory bar, but the title in the Slashdot summary is confusing because it's not the bar association imposing the rule but the New York's Administrative Board of Courts which is in fact a government entity which all lawyers who wish to practice in New York must abide by.

Re:Recording Industry vs The People based in NY

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Thank you. I agree that it is way over the top. I can see where big corporations -- who can pay top dollar for legal information -- would love to see the information become less available to the public. For example, how happy do you think the record labels would be to see my recording industry blog shut down?

Fortunately, though, the entire legal community in New York agrees with you as well, that it is way over the top. So I don't think the rules will go through in that overbroad format.

For those of you who haven't seen the rules, they're posted here.