Lawyer advertising bans fell as protected commercial speech under the First Amendment
Evidence
The next year, the Court killed the ban on advertising, too. This was the case of Bates v. State Bar of Arizona. John R. Bates, with his partner Van O’Steen, ran a “legal clinic” in Phoenix, Arizona. His ads in the paper (“Do You Need a Lawyer?”) touched off the case. Bates won, arguing that his truthful advertising should be protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution, and since then more and more lawyers have taken advantage of these decisions, and advertise their wares. Obviously, their ads are not aimed at rich Americans, let alone Walmart or General Motors; the ads appeal, for example, to people arrested for drunk driving, or people with work injuries, or immigra tion problems—​people who never, perhaps, dealt with a lawyer before, and have only the vaguest idea how to get one. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 1284
Categorization
- DEFINE: Names and explains Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, the landmark case legalizing lawyer advertising.
- XREF: connects to: Professional ethics rules banning advertising protected elite lawyers over clients — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1281; Industries equate product use with free speech to shift regulatory debate; Supreme Court rulings on lawyer advertising enabled mass-market legal clinics that undercut solo practitioners — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 703 (+2 more)