Your ad here…or not
Lawyers in Ontario are debating whether to tighten up the rules that govern how they can advertise their services to the public.
The debate emerges out of a package of amendments the country’s largest legal profession regulator, the Law Society of Upper Canada, has proposed to its rulebook.
Maia Bent, president of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association (OTLA), says the proposed LSUC changes address some issues that had been flagged by her organization. For example, the OTLA is troubled when it sees ads that declare a particular lawyer to be better than a competitor. In other businesses, such hyperbole might be dismissed as mere puffery. But the OTLA thinks such ads should be out of bounds because there’s no way for the public to verify such assertions.