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On January 14, 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit partially vacated Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s rules imposing net neutrality obligations on broadband providers, while still affirming the Agency’s jurisdiction to promote broadband infrastructure investment and competition in an “open Internet”. A little background. There are four major participants in […]

In 2013 Florida adopted new rules on lawyer advertising that impose restrictions on websites and blogs. In particular, statements in these media must be “objectively verifiable.” A lawsuit filed December 10 challenges the constitutionality of the rules under the First Amendment. The complaint includes a detailed history of Florida’s broad restrictions on lawyer advertising.   Follow us on& […]

In In re Information Management Services Derivative Litigation, C.A. No. 8168-VCL, slip op. (Del. Ch. Ct. Sept. 5, 2013), the Delaware Court of Chancery court dealt with a dispute between two families, the Burtons and the Lakes, that each owned 50% of IMF.  The Burtons accused the Lakes of breach of fiduciary duty in management […]

In Opinion 972 issued June 26, 2013, the Committee advised that under New York Rules a law firm could not list its services under the heading “Specialities” and an individual lawyer could not do so unless the lawyer was certified as a specialist in New York.  The Committee did not “address whether the lawyer or […]

Opinion 465 issued October 21, 2013, the Committee analyzed two types of programs: coupon and prepaid. In a coupon program, the purchaser buys a voucher entitling the purchaser to a discount on legal fees. In the prepaid plan, the purchaser pays a lump sum for a described legal service or specified number of hours. The […]

The Florida Bar’s Standing Committee on Advertising issued guidelines for lawyer’s use of social networking sites on April 16, 2013. The guidelines raise a number of concerns including acceptance of endorsements on LinkedIn because of the use of the term “expertise”; the requirement that advertisements must indicate an office location when applied to Twitter; and […]

Hunter v. Virginia State Bar, 744 S.E.2d 611 (2013), deals with the question of whether blogs are subject to the rules of professional conduct. Attorney Hunter, a criminal defense lawyer, wrote a blog on his firm website discussing recent cases of interest in Virginia, most of which were cases Hunter successfully handled. The Virginia State […]

On November 20, 2012, the FTC bureau approved the proposed settlement according to which Google Inc. has agreed to pay $22.5 million civil penalty settling charges that it misrepresented privacy assurances to users of Apple Inc.’s Safari Internet browser. The settlement resolves allegations that Google made misrepresentations to Safari users about the placement of advertising […]