Slashdot Mirror
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."
Interesting in that it points out a class of morons. But does anyone really think this will happen, given the consequences?
Or they could just stop blogging and do the job i'm paying them $100/hr to do.
Badass Resumes
one must also take into account this as well http://www.easy-poll.com/sonda.vote.2.6979/
Yeah, I'm tired of searching out Lawyer's blogs to see who has the most annoying 1-800-ASK-____ phone number because late night TV doesn't show me enough of them.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/ is one that could be affected as its based out of NY, and is defentlay one that a lot of people pay attention to. This seams a little over the top to be honest
I wonder if slashdot interviews would count?
Don't be absurd. It won't force them to report more, it will force them not to update their web logs, which is, no doubt, the real point.
Money Grubbing Lawyers?
"Generally, these rules require lawyers to submit their ads to a review board, often with a filing fee paid with each new advertisement."
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Honestly, who cares? It's not like the government is doing this, it's a "voluntary" organization maintained by a group of lawyers. This has zero effect on anyone except lawyers and probably won't go through anyway, because there are plenty of lawyers who are capable of showing how blogging isn't advertisement.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
...is certainly akin to advertising, but some is more akin to writing op-ed pieces for a newspaper and doing commentary in other media, or just writing a book (but that it is published incrementally.)
Seems to me it makes more sense to regulate based on the content than the medium, in this case, but then, I'm not a member of the NY Bar.
There are an insane number of lawyers in New York. If 1% of them sent in a blog post check request every day for a week you probably wouldn't be able to stand in the bar associations hall and USPS would be profitable again. They might even be able to put some of those blue mailboxes back on the streets again.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
I read the articles and was left wondering if a website sans blog is considered advertising. Does anyone know if it is? If so wouldn't it stand to reason that websites have to be submitted for review? In Florida (yeah, yeah, I know!) that doesn't seem to be the case.
Alright! I know I'm in there! If I don't come out, I'll have to come in after me!
Luckily, my brother, who's a lawyer in NYC, only has VLOGs and never BLOGs, so he's safe.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Having read through the rule changes, this seems to be limited to actual solicitation for services. Legal commentary or discussion of legal issues isn't anywhere in this, that I could see.
Basically, it applies the limitations currently in place for print and television ads to internet ads as well, which is a reasonable step to take... regulate all advertising, or regulate none.
Did anyone else see this headline and think it was talking about some bar-room brawl aimed at lawyers that spread all over new york, then want to join in? Pass the bud and punch another lawyer!!
Qxe4
...who read the headline, and immediately thought that some bar in New York was having problems with lawyers taking up the tables with their laptops, blogging away all night and taking the space away from paying patrons?
No, you phrased it wrong. It should be:
First they came for the lawyers.
But IDC, because IANAL.
Hardly.
This is just one occupation that is being censored. Because it is lawyers, nobody will stand up and argue. But what other occupations can be censored to make sure that you have to have your information certified on your blogs? Medical blogs? Engineering blogs? Government watchgroup blogs that happen to have a lawyer on their staff? Nutritional blogs? Technology blogs?
If this concept is slightly extended, anyone who has to be certified in any way will have to prove every statement they make on a blog is correct (and pay the fees to do so). There are a lot of jobs that require some sort of certification from the level of operating a nuclear reactor to the level of driving a truck.
I want to care about lawyers getting screwed but I'm too busy getting giddy over the thought of it.
Information flowing without our control! The horror.
-Nothing to see here, move along. You've seen this story before.
Enforcement usually would probably be in response to a complaint of violation; state bar associations tend to have broad powers to discipline their members, and that discipline can be pretty effective given that bar association membership is legally required to practice law.
Yes that and the mounting server costs as he is slashdotted to oblivion.
I'm no expert on Greenwald, but doesn't he live in Brazil or something? Would this still affect him? Is he still practicing NY law from another country? Or is it Thomas Ellers that live in NY while Greenwald lives in Brazil?
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
...for the Bob Loblaw Law Blog
Or is it the bar raising the Bar?
IIANYL, and this strikes me as a red herring. I've read through this, and the gist of the amendments have to deal with solicitations and advertisements as applied to modern technology. I can't read the arguments on the second link, but there are two things that were immediately clear from reading the amendments. First, they are narrowly construed to apply only to solicitation and advertisement, not publications in general. Second, it is in large part a technological amendment, to deal with new methods of advertisements like pop-up advertisements.
The first is the relevant part. I don't, on the face of it, see how this would preclude blogging. It would prevent blogging as a form of advertisement, but that's the very point of the restrictions on professional attorney and counselor publications. Advertisements for lawyers are permitted insofar, but only insofar, as the advertisement aids the public's ability to make an informed decision. Extensions of that are generally barred as being potentially misleading.
The second comment is relevant because it shows that they are technologically savvy. This gives some hope that even if this comes into force and causes problems, they will be conscious of the problems it creates and amend it appropriately. Incidentally, before this amendment, by interpretation, there appears to be some technical requirement to have every partner's name in the law firm's domain name.
Again, though, I haven't read the criticisms, and I've only given it a once-over. I don't pretend to be defending the NY bar; I don't know the arguments against it. I've just read through it and this is all I could come up with. If there is something there that unduly inhibits an attorney or counselor-at-law's ability to publish online, I would be interested in seeing that amended before it goes into force. If someone points a good argument out to me, I'll be sure to send along my comments, as a member of the bar.
The only criticism I could see was an extraterritorial clause which makes the law apply to out-of-NY lawyers who solicit or advertise their services in NY. But that seems reasonable, given the nexus between the out-of-NY lawyers and their purported NY services, and is totally unrelated to this slashdot article.
the sad part is that they realy arn't trying to censor them.. they just want the money.. i am sure that if someone posts 3 times a day and they have 1000 people posting we get 3000 things every day.. the board isn't going to read a damn one of them.. they might filter it for key words and send it on... they just want the damn money..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
My first impression from the headline was that there was a tavern in New York that was taking a stand against lawyers doing their blogging while sitting around in bars. My first thought: "Bars in New York have wireless internet?"
at first i saw the topic and i was like why the heck are bars cracking down on lawers. did they get too drunk and blogged about service? then i realized they ment the NY state bar...
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
Finally, a legal situation where lawyers lose. Karma's a bitch.
Usually they're the only ones that come out ahead...
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.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
So, did anyone else read the headline and think that this was about a bar cracking down on a bunch of lawyers sitting around on their laptops on a free wifi connection and using up all their bandwidth? I suspect the story might be a bit more interesting if the did?
While limitations on advertising by lawyers have been around for a long time, they seem to have their roots in in pre-democratic times, when legal representation was to available to the wealthy if at all and the very practice of law was considered a somewhat questionable activity that had to be strictly regulated in order to be kept respectable. I fail to see any justification for restrictions on the speech of lawyers different from those that apply to everyone else. Lawyers would still be deterred from false advertising and libel by the existing laws of general application. Is there any good reason that censorship by the bar associations should not be eliminated?
I would think it has to do with the right to a fair trial. If there's at least a baseline standard, no one can argue that their incompetent "attorney" violated that right.
Of course, the problem is that the law itself is too complex and convoluted, considering that we need professionals singly versed in the law to argue arcane gray-areas, in order to facilitate what's supposed to be the universal social contract. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse", but then again, ignorance of the law is damn near inevitable.
OTOH, people are assholes, and if the law didn't caulk all the cracks with specific language, they'd just find new, unrestricted ways to be assholes.
Basically, I feel about law the same way I feel about economic systems-- I haven't seen a good one yet, but what's there is about the best of the lousy ones.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Lawyers who complain about corruption in the courts often use blogs to expose it.
Look at Barbara Johnson's site http://www.falseallegations.com/
The bar association doesn't like it when lawyers start publicizing problems in their courts.
Thus, the Massachusetts bar is seeking to disbar Barbara Johnson and shut down her site.
Some person over on Groklaw who went by the nym "Allparadox" said he had to stop because as an ex lawyer he could be done for practising without a license just for merely expressing a personal opinion in a comment thread.
In our country we smile wryly, shake our heads in disbelief & say "Only in America..."
If lawyers want to do this to themselves imagine what they want to do to regular folk who blog.
... wondering about what a weird place New York must be for it to be having a bunch of lawyers sitting around in their favourite bar blogging about on their wifi laptops. And that they were soon about to be kicked out of this haven of theirs, possibly as they were annoying the rest of the patrons with their asocial behaviour.
ISO certified == THX certified
its -> it's
defentlay -> definitely
seams -> seems
If nobody ever corrects you, how will you ever learn?
If I recall, The Hammer had something to do with these regulations.
He advertised exclusively in upstate NY but never set foot out of Florida.
Hahaha HA HA HA hahaha (hrhmph. excuse me a moment, ok). snicker. heeheehee hmph. heeheehee.
Because it is lawyers, nobody will stand up and argue.
I'm pretty sure someone will stand up and argue. The lawyers themselves. And I hear they can be rather good.
Victory or awesome!
WikiCreole - a common wiki markup language
>> The New York bar has proposed new rules which would define blogging as advertising.
Jeez, you go somewhere for a quiet drink and look what happens.
The Association of the Bar of the City of New York has pointed out the First Amendment problems with the proposed rules and suggested detailed changes (pdf file) in them.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful