Can Lawyers Be Trusted – On the Internet?
As an online marketer I have worked for many years developing, deploying and studying evolving ways for marketing professional services online. My specific focus has been both lawyers and their firms and financial services firms. While financial services firms are notoriously conservative in their initiatives, lawyers often approach comatose. There are many understandable reasons for this which I won’t explore here. But one of them is the fear and uncertainty perpetrated through each state’s bar association rules about exactly how they might go to market. Fear has a chilling effect on exploration and that includes lawyers’ effective use of the Internet – where I work.
I was excited to discover that the American Bar Association’s Commission on Ethics 20/20 is, their words, “ examining a number of legal ethics issues arising from lawyers’ use of technology, including issues arising from Internet-based client development tools.”