Do a poll of NACDL’s lawyer members and I’d wager that 25% believe that the advertisers are somehow vetted by more than just a checkbook. And I think (there’s data on this, I’m sure, though I don’t have it) that only a very small percentage of NACDL lawyer members have been in practice under five years.

When I miscommunicate, it’s my responsibility.

HTML tags work here, by the way.

I certainly think it’s _naive_ of any attorney to assume that an organization like the ABA vets their sponsors, but I think you’re wrong that they shouldn’t be expected to. I don’t think it’s that far fetched for an attorney to hold one of their professional organizations to some ethical standards and to not take sponsorship money from organizations pimping unethical services. No substitute for doing your own due diligence, but I can see how young, inexperienced, or just naively optimistic attorneys might make that leap. The ABA is an organization of attorneys; it should uphold the same ethical standards that each individual attorney member is expected to uphold.

Stop laughing–I really mean that.

I was not. I didn’t think that you put yourself in the category of lawyers who thought that the ABA vetted its advertisers, and I wasn’t putting you in that category.

My attempt at nonsexist usage (I often use “she” to describe a lawyer of nonspecific gender), I’m sure, conveyed the impression that I was taking a shot at you.

My apologies for communicating poorly.

Years ago, I made the mistake of relying on a bar’s recommended provider. When I first purchased malpractice insurance, I went with the bar’s preferred provider at the advice of a trusted (and ethical) colleague who had done the same thing. I didn’t price the other services or looking at the company’s record. I learned my lesson several months later after 9-11, when my insurer went bankrupt and left me without coverage. After shopping around, I replaced that company with another one that gave me more coverage, lower deductible at half the cost. I had foolishly assumed that a “preferred provider” meant that the Bar had selected the best company, when in reality, it simply picked the company that paid it the biggest kickback. I’ve since learned my lesson — that Bar sponsorship is meaningless — and I should do more to get the message out about this.

But many lawyers don’t realize this and it doesn’t mean that they are stupid or deserve to be banned from the Internet. In fact, they themselves may vet sponsors or affiliates and reasonably assume that the bars do the same thing. In my own case, I vet sponsors at my blog. I vet the lawyers and service providers who I work with and only recommend those whom I view as credible. So when a bar designates a provider as “preferred,” it seems reasonable to expect that the bar is doing the same thing.

The other point about bar approved conduct is that many lawyers actually do consult with bar counsel and the rules of professional responsibility before undertaking a specific activity. I’m a member of Solosez and not a week passes without a lawyer inquiring about whether a particular service or scheme constitutes fee splitting or for-fee referral or some other unethical conduct. In most cases, after gathering feedback, most of these lawyers will report back that they’ve declined to participate in the activity. I know that there are plenty of greedy lawyers, but I also believe that there are plenty of lawyers who do want to do the right thing and they look to bar rules for guidance.

Of course, the rules don’t provide guidance on everything. For example, with regard to comment spam on blogs there aren’t any rules, but at least one bar initiated an investigation of Canter & Siegel, the husband and wife lawyer pair responsible for the birth of modern day email spam. http://tinyurl.com/mxutxa In addition, your blog is your property, so if someone commits an action against it, you and your colleagues can do whatever you want. I may not agree with the approach, but then again, it’s not my blog so my opinion doesn’t count.

Finally, I do not support the concept of bar regulation either. If you read my blog, I have long believed that market forces are a more effective tool to kill a service rather than the bars. For example, the numerous posts that Eric Turkewitz has done about the high cost and low value of Findlaw websites and SEO services will, in my view, do much more to stop people from using them (and in turn, shut it down) than calling out the lawyers who use those services. In short, I prefer to attack the company or criticize the service rather than the lawyers who use it. If enough people see that a service doesn’t provide value, it will go out of business.

However, while I don’t like bar rules, they are what they are. “Rules” of blogging created and enforced by a group of bloggers do not provide a clear standard. For example, take the case of Total Attorneys. To you, it is for fee referral, as if a lawyer were using a runner service. I don’t think the rules are that clear. I visited the site (which is prominently labeled as lawyer advertising) , viewed the rules for participation and ran through a demonstration. To me, the set up is very similar to how Google Ads (and much Internet advertising) operates – payment for leads that come through. Indeed, none of those leads may pan out, which makes TA a potentially expensive and ineffective advertising proposition. I have no problem debating the ethics of a service like TA – I think it is educational. But to call out the lawyers who participate in the service are unethical or should be disbarred goes too far in my view.

To be fair, I am pretty sure that you did not name the names of the Connecticut 5 in your blog posts on this topic, so I am not assigning blame here. Rather, I’m just using this situation as an example of one where there is bonafide disagreement over the ethics of a particular practice, but where lawyers’ reputations could be ruined simply because the amorphous “rules of the blogosphere” condemn the conduct.

As for your remark that:

Any lawyer who holds that particular belief [that ABA sponsorship confers credibility] should be barred from the internet until she develops some sense –

I’ll address that comment at my site.