Law blogging and attorney advertising: Stern v. Bluestone

The New York State Court of Appeals, in Stern v. Bluestone, 2009 NY Slip Op 04740 (2009), over­turned a lower court rul­ing that ruled that a faxed newslet­ter deal­ing with attor­ney mal­prac­tice issues — the same area in which the author of the newslet­ter prac­ticed. Lower courts thought this newslet­ter con­sti­tuted adver­tis­ing, and thus ran into rules about attor­ney adver­tis­ing. The Court of Appeals disagreed.

Why is this impor­tant for law bloggers?

The pri­mary pur­pose of most law blogs is the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion. Like Bluestone’s “Attorney Malpractice Report,” blogs edu­cate the reader about a sub­ject mat­ter that is unre­lated to the self-​​promotion of the blogger.

Certainly increased vis­i­bil­ity of the blog­ger is a byprod­uct of the pub­li­ca­tion of a suc­cess­ful blog; and as a result of that vis­i­bil­ity, new clients may follow.

But, that doesn’t mean that the pri­mary pur­pose of the blog is the reten­tion of clients.

In com­par­i­son, I think that most peo­ple would agree that the pri­mary pur­pose of tele­vi­sion and radio ads, bill­board ads, pro­fes­sional Web sites and yel­low page ads is the reten­tion of clients. Blogs are dif­fer­ent because the pri­mary pur­pose of blogs — shar­ing infor­ma­tion — is sep­a­rate and dis­tinct from the self-​​promotion that is the essen­tial ele­ment of most advertisements.

Thankfully, the court’s deci­sion in Stern v. Bluestone is a strong indi­ca­tion that the high­est court in New York under­stands this dis­tinc­tion. The court under­stands that lawyers’ cre­ative use of emerg­ing Internet tech­nolo­gies is, in many instances, sim­ply an exten­sion of tra­di­tional net­work­ing activ­i­ties, includ­ing speak­ing at a sem­i­nar, author­ing an arti­cle in a legal pub­li­ca­tion, dis­trib­ut­ing a newslet­ter via e-​​mail or join­ing a com­mit­tee at the local bar association.

It’s good to know that the high­est court in New York “gets it.”

via The Court of Appeals “gets it” when it comes to tech­nol­ogy « Practicing Law in the 21st Century-​​A Law & Technology Blog.

In short: the same logic could be applied to a top­i­cal law blog writ­ten by an attor­ney, mak­ing this rul­ing impor­tant out­side of the realm of faxed newslt­ters. In addi­tion, lthough this rul­ing applies only to New York State,many states have sim­i­lar rules, and hope­fully this rul­ing bodes well for poten­tial cases in other jurisdictions.

Related arti­cles by Zemanta

• Journalist Shield Laws and Bloggers (inpro​pri​a​per​sona​.com)
• When Law Prevents Righting a Wrong (inpro​pri​a​per​sona​.com)