by Kathleen Haughney
The News Service of Florida
A proposed change in the way Florida lawyers advertise on the web has some of the biggest firms in Florida protesting that it will cost them millions of dollars and drive clients to out-of-state firms.
The Florida Supreme Court is being flooded with hundreds of pages worth of comments from lawyers reacting to a Bar rule proposal floated earlier this year that would prohibit attorneys from including online testimonials and case summaries on a law firm’s website unless readers are first directed to a disclaimer box.
The disclaimer is simple, including such terms as “the facts and circumstances of your case may differ.” But the web work needed to add it to a firm’s digital pages could prove costly, lawyers
say.
Foley & Lardner, a national law firm that has offices in Jacksonville, Miami and Tallahassee, joined seven other large firms to fight the proposed changes, submitting a 66-page comment to the court that objects to the changes. Foley & Lardner offices, alone, would have to screen more than 15,000 pages to check for potentially objectionable material.
“The aggregated cost of compliance with the website rule for all law firms subject to it will be in the millions and millions of dollars,” the firm wrote in its comments. “Those compliance costs, however, pale in comparison to the value of information that would be lost to Foley Website visitors under the new rules. “
Internet marketing consultants have told The Florida Bar News that they estimate it will cost between $300 to $500 for a typical law firm to comply with the proposed rule change.
Joining Foley & Lardner in responding to the Bar rule were the firms Hunton & Williams, Jorden Burt, Holland & Knight, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Carlton Fields, Bilzin Sumberg Baena Price & Axelrod and White & Case.
Tampa-based Carlton Fields estimates the new rule would take about 3,000 hours of work to examine the firm’s website. But the firm is also concerned that the changes will simply make it more difficult for potential clients to find information and could send them, in frustration, to another firm.
The eight firms voiced concerns that the changes could make legal websites so cumbersome that potential clients might be turned off.
“Florida residents surfing the web and looking for legal information from Florida firms will gravitate to the more attractive and accessible websites offered by the non-Florida firms, bypassing the very firms that Florida regulates,” the eight firms wrote in their filing.
There is also concern that a disclaimer box would not work on a smart phone or other mobile device that a potential customer may use to bring up a law firm’s website. According to court documents, Holland & Knight’s 2010 web traffic showed 93,479 hits from a mobile device. The eight firms noted that some devices simply may not allow a user to click on a disclaimer box; others may just be confused, they said.
“Visitors may mistakenly assume they are being asked to enter into some sort of binding agreements by accepting the disclaimers,” they wrote.