There’s plenty of blame to go around.

I think it’s unreasonable for a lawyer to treat the ABA’s acceptance of advertising dollars as an implicit endorsement.

I don’t belong to the ABA and I wouldn’t belong to the SBOT if I didn’t have to.

I posted a similar comment on Eric Turkewitz’s site and I hope you don’t mind me posting here. I fully agree that lawyers are responsible for complying with ethics rules in advertising, whether they post the ads themselves or outsource to other companies. At the same time, I cannot fully fault these lawyers for trusting Findlaw because Findlaw and its parent, West are frequent and visible sponsors of ABA and state bar events. Many lawyers believe — and not unreasonably in my view — that when a bar accepts substantial amounts of advertising or sponsorship money from a company, the company’s products and services are ethically compliant.

I suspect that most of the lawyers who put their trust in companies like Findlaw or Total Attorneys are relatively unsophisticated when it comes to the Internet and blogs. After all, if they had any savvy, they wouldn’t be outsourcing to begin with. Because these lawyers are not savvy, I don’t believe that they are aware of the ethics issues related to online ads and social media. At the same time, the fact that these lawyers are choosing bar-sanctioned sponsors suggests to me that they are trying to do the right thing. Otherwise, they could simply go with a cheaper no-brand company instead (or go with an ex-con!) That’s why I fault the ABA and the state bars – because they confer an imprimatur of legitimacy on companies like Findlaw by accepting their sponsorship money.

As I commented on Eric’s blog, to me, the real story is the ABA and state bars’ willingness to take sponsorship money from companies that are engaged in either unethical or unseemly advertising tactics. Likewise, the impetus for change is to demand that the ABA and bars stop taking money from companies that engage in unethical advertising and to rally the ABA and bars’ members to resign their membership until the bars exercise some quality control with respect to their chosen sponsors.