Monday, February 4, 2013

Benefits of Legal Advertising


COMPETITION IS ULTIMATELY BENEFICIAL FOR THE CONSUMERS AND CAN BE IMPLEMENTED PROPERLY ONLY THROUGH ADVERTISING



Competition can be held immensely necessary for any market force to operate in any country successfully and good marketing strategies regarding advertising can actually lead to the ultimate benefit of the consumer. Competition also ensures better service and fairer prices. For instance, competition may force a smaller law firm to provide better and more personal service in order to compete with a larger firm which spends more money on advertising or which offers lower fees. India is a democratic society, and therefore should not bar any particular business, trade, or profession from domestic and international competition and in the process causing harm to the consumers.

In recent years, the Indian legal profession has become global in nature and therefore foreign law firms are immensely interested to open up offices and to practice in India as India offers a wide range of legal services of highly competent quality, at a very low price compared to the other economies of the world. Therefore, Bar Council of India needs to be repealing some of its prohibition regarding advertising in order to suit the modern scenario in the country. And also, this will be beneficial for the consumers of legal services. This is the age of consumerism and competition law, and therefore every consumer is entitled to free and fair competition among rivals in order to be benefitted.

The view of seeing legal services as a trade also has been observed by the Supreme Court and the National Consumer Forum in numerous cases. One example can be given as it held in the case of In Re Sanjiv Datta, Secretary, Ministry of Information and broadcasting, the Supreme Court observed,
“Some of the members of the profession have been adopting prospectively casual approach to the practice of the profession. …… they do not only amount to contempt of court but to the positive disservice to the litigants.’’, thereby enlightening the fact as law not being seen as a business practice is actually leading to casual approach regarding it among the advocates and therefore the clients or consumers are getting adversely affected.

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