Professional ethics rules banning advertising protected elite lawyers over clients

Evidence

Even the ethics were class-​biased. Under the old ABA canons of ethics, advertising was forbidden. Wall Street, after all, did not need to advertise. The small lawyer did, but the ABA was not concerned with his wishes. Ordinary laypeople, too, were disadvantaged: it was hard for them to find out what lawyers had to offer. The rule, in other words, made sure that “knowledge would remain unevenly, and unfairly, distributed.” The bar did not like price competition, either. In many states there were tables of minimum fees. Price-​cutting was unwelcome. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 1281

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Lawyer advertising bans fell as protected commercial speech under the First Amendment — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1284; Bar associations began as exclusive elite clubs, not mass professional bodies — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1278; Lawyer discipline is rare relative to complaint volume and lenient toward infractions — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1288 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Professional ethics codes partly serve elite bar interests as anticompetitive rules. #corroborates (1.00) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 4043
• A professional association can compromise ethics to protect its financial relationships #expands (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2383