New Supreme Court Orders

Justice Ternus signed a couple of orders that were released yesterday. One allows advertising of the fact that an attorney accepts clients in a limited representation capacity. The other allows advertising of Juvenile Law as a field of practice.

I guess I’m a little surprised that Juvenile Law hadn’t been a recognizable field of practice prior to now. Many of the attorneys I know who practice in the basement in Linn County practice almost exclusively in the basement in Linn County. I suppose a lot of places in Iowa are much different than Linn County.

Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers

The Iowa State Bar Association Comittee on Ethics and Practice Guidelines released on October 30 a follow-up to Ethics Opinion 07-04. 07-04 dealt with the propriety of an attorney advertising a listing in peer-reviewed law lists. The Committee stated that the peer-review methodology of both Martindale Hubbell and Chambers and Partners is sufficiently independent to allow advertisement of such listing without the risk of misleading consumers about the quality of work an attorney performs. Opinion 07-07 now includes Best Lawyers in America and Super Lawyers in the group of approved lists.

Both opinions stem from a couple of older opinions. In Opinion 91-26 and 92-11, the Committee took into account the fact that Best Lawyers in America was “marketed exclusively to the legal profession, priced for the legal profession and sold almost exclusively to the legal profession” in determining that a lising in that publication was not a violation of ethical rules. In 91-26, the Committee originally found such listings to violate the rules, but superceded that opinion with 92-11, using the quoted language as the reason for the change.

Iowa Rule of Professional Conduct 32:7.1 prohibits the use of any communication to the public that would be misleading or that makes any claim as to the quality of the lawyer’s legal services. The fact that Best Lawyers was marketed solely to others in the legal profession seems to have been it’ s saving grace in 1992. Otherwise, the mere name of publications like Best Lawyers and Super Lawyers would make a statement about the quality of an attorney’s legal services.

But consider this information from the Best Lawyers current website:

“Best Lawyers lists will soon be available on all Bloomberg Professional terminals, reaching more than 260,000 top business people across the globe”

While a good portion of the website mentions marketing to general counsel, this final statement seems to apply to general business people, not other lawyers. Not to mention that the company boasts that “13 million readers see them in dozens of city and regional publications like The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine.” Doesn’t this change the analysis?

With the advent of the internet, it’s becoming more difficult to market anything to one segment of the business world. It appears that anyone can go to the Super Lawyers website and find those who are listed for free.

Shouldn’t we be worried about these types of lists?