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Quote:Recently, New York's Administrative Board of Courts has proposed a new set of rules that would have a tremendous impact on legal blogs. Touted as bringing the rules of professional responsibility into the Internet age, these rules would construe legal blogs as advertising per se. As such, lawyers would be required to print, store and forward hard copies each and every time that they update their blog...

Quote:In the name of protecting consumers from false and misleading lawyer advertising, New York is proposing draconian new restrictions on Internet communications and other forms of attorney advertising that will directly impact attorneys who maintain blogs or websites in New York, or in many cases who simply send an email into the state.  Instead of protecting consumers, however, the proposed rules will burden completely truthful and non-misleading communication by attorneys, and will serve no purpose other than to deprive consumers of useful information about their legal rights, protect established law firms from competition, and render many aspects of the Internet largely unusable for New York attorneys.

Stripped to their essence, the proposed amendments would define the term "advertisement" extremely broadly as any public communication made "by . . . a lawyer . . . about a lawyer."  Sec. 1200.1(k). This definition explicitly includes all forms of communication on the Internet, including websites, email, and instant messaging.  Sec. 1200.1(m).  There is no requirement that the speech be commercial in nature or related to the lawyer's practice of law...