Monday, February 4, 2013

Legal Advertising in US and UK


POSITION IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD



Advocates in many other prominent parts of the world are allowed freely to advertise about their work thanks to globalised economy as norms lay down by the WTO as advocacy is seen as a means of trade practice. Earlier even in liberalized countries like USA and UK didn’t allow advertising but slowly even they allowed in the late seventies and eighties.

In USA, it is even impossible to distinguish between false and misleading advertisements from the correct ones banning advertisements by lawyers was rejected totally by the US Supreme Court which held that people's right to information contradicts with this ban and frivolous intention of false advertisement is not a sufficient ground to prevent advertising by lawyers in good faith. The right of lawyers to advertise has been recognized as a part of commercial speech. The US attorneys are allowed to advertise of their work or publicize as per the rules of client attorney relationship under model rules of professional ethics laid down by the American Bar though advertisement to any potential customer or soliciting work through telephonic conversations and agents are not allowed. In USA, the lawyers are even charged high or less depending on the services they provide (their specialization) for example, a tax lawyer may be charged $5 per hour for his ads whereas a lawyer specialized in providing foreclosure defense services will be charged $7 per hour for his ads as per the data provided by the Wall Street Journal. And this is the real scenario there regarding highly competitive legal advertisements whereas in India we can’t even imagine such a position.

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