Lawyers also participate in chat groups or online discussion forums. An expansive interpretation would suggest that whenever lawyers are engaged in commercial speech with nonclients, they are advertising. Regulators will likely find that many lawyer Web pages are advertisements. Given that fact, it is a good idea to follow the advertising rules in your jurisdiction when setting up a Web site. Florida is now considering whether participation in chat rooms for the purpose of attracting clients is improper.
Similar scrutiny is likely in other jurisdictions.
When called upon to judge lawyer conduct online, a regulator's first response will probably be to look to existing rules and try to apply them to online conduct. Application will not always be easy or certain, because how you apply existing regulations may depend on how you analogize online conduct to offline conduct. First, since she did not know what a sig file was, I had to explain that it is several lines of text added by posting or e-mail software at the end of the post that identifies the person doing the posting. What it contains is a personal decision, but it often contains information like contact information, the location of the person's Web site, and sometimes even includes a favorite quote. She analogized a sig file to handing a person you have just met at a cocktail party your business card without being asked for it, and suggested that attaching a sig file constituted improper solicitation.