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Reason No. 157 Why People Hate Lawyers: Ridiculous Website Disclaimers

By Bruce Carton

You invest the time and brainpower to figure out that you want to visit a law firm's website. You go to the effort to find the website and try to check it out ... and you are immediately greeted with this pop-up on the homepage: Don't blame the law firm (Maltzman Foreman), however. It is just trying to play by the latest rules laid down by the Florida Bar, which were slated to take effect July 1, 2010 but have been postponed due to protests. The Daily Business Review reports that the new rules would have barred online testimonials, summaries of case results and "deceptive, misleading, manipulative" or confusing audio or visual content. This drew protests from lawyers, which led the Florida Bar to then offer a compromise amendment allowing existing sites to be viewed if visitors clicked a disclaimer box. Hence the stupidity above. Florida's largest law firms are now objecting to the the regulations on First Amendment grounds, and are organizing protests and threatening lawsuits. A "loose coalition" that includes Holland & Knight, Carlton Fields, Bilzin Sumberg Baena Price & Axelrod, Hunton & Williams, Jorden Burt, and Foley & Lardner filed a petition with the Supreme Court requesting...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on July 12, 2010 (boomark / email).