The lawyer was disciplined for the
usual reasons. While the language will
vary from state to state, essentially this behavior is punishable because the
advertisement is misleading or creates unjustified expectations on the part of
the prospective client. So where is the
double standard in legal ethics?
The double standard is happening
at our ivory towers of legal academia.
The lawyers that work at law schools—the place where legal ethics are
supposed to be taught—are getting their schools sued all over the country for making false
and misleading statements on their own web pages. These web pages are intended to induce
prospective students to spend up to $150,000 (in tuition alone), and include false or misleading statements about the schools' job placement data, and outright falsified statements about student test scores and GPAs. (These two things directly impact a school's US News rank, which increases its prestige and number of applications.)
The problem, however, is that
lawyer disciplinary bodies will never sanction these lawyers for making false
or misleading statements. And these
lawyers know it. That’s why, despite the numerous lawsuits (some of which have survived the summary judgment stage of litigation),
these lawyers are not deterred: they continue to make false and misleading statements to increase enrollment at their schools, even though our country
currently produces more than two lawyers for each available legal job.
After writing this, however, I
stumbled upon this article. At least one person
is calling for consistent application of the ethics rules—even for the
so-called “elite” of our profession.
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