Attorney Advertising

The Fifth Circuit has struck down many of the Louisiana Bar's new, more stringent rules on advertising while upholding others. In Public Citizen v. Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board, the Court found that certain restrictions violated an attorney's right to commercial speech under the First Amendment. The LADB argued that the new rules were necessary to protect the public from deceptive advertising, but the Court rejected the Board's "assumption that Louisianians are insufficiently sophisticated to avoid being misled" by some of the ads in question. The opinion and related materials can be found on the Louisiana Bar's web site, http://www.lsba.org/2007MemberServices/lawyeradvertising.asp