The age old rules that govern lawyer advertising is having a tough time with the development of new Internet technologies such as Pay Per Click, Social Networking, Blogging and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This new and rapidly developing form of lawyer advertising has become a hot bed for lawyer ethics debates and even litigation against companies and the lawyers who use their service.
States like Illinois and Connecticut will likely set the standard and policies affecting the remaining states that have not addressed legal ethics rules and newly developed legal marketing solutions provided for through the Web. Connecticut will likely rule in January of 2010 on whether or not services offered by non-attorneys will be able to sell leads or referrals to licensed attorneys.
Lawyer Pay Per Lead programs such as those offered by Total Attorneys (TotalAttorneys.com) are facing increased scrutiny and even litigation by lawyers who oppose buying referrals from non-lawyer sources. The reason for existing ethics rules that bar selling referrals from non-lawyers to lawyers is to prevent the public from making financial gains by advancing litigation.
Other companies such as Ingenio and the major yellow page companies have been ramping up their pay per performance services to include selling leads to attorneys. With law firms spending an estimated $1.5 billion dollars in annual law firm advertising each year, it is likely that “the heavy hitter” or “the strong arm” will be able to continue to operate business as usual.
