The Board is further of the opinion that West Virginia's Rules of Professional Conduct apply to electronic communications from lawyers not licensed in West Virginia sent or directed to West Virginia residents specifically. The first type of solicitation is banned absolutely with respect to those individuals with whom a lawyer has no family or prior professional relationship. The solicitation cannot involve coercion, duress or harassment. The prospective client has not already made known to a lawyer a desire not to be solicited. A copy of said communication must be kept for two years.
Web sites are obviously a form of advertising through the public media.
Because users must affirmatively go to a Web site, there is no possibility of coercion or harassment, and a user understands that a Web site is a form of advertising, similar to a brochure or promotional video. That way, when the e-mail message or news group posting comes up, the receiver has the option of opening it or putting in the electronic trash without reading it, just like the recipient of mail has. Because of the ease and low cost of sending e-mail, the Board has concerns about recipients being inundated with solicitations and being forced to review them all to make sure that a lawyer is not trying to communicate personally with the user on a current matter. It is important to remember that the user may incur costs in retrieving e-mail messages or news group postings, such as time spent on the internet and space on a hard drive. Moreover, news groups usually focus on a particular topic, and a blanket marketing of one's services in numerous news groups simultaneously, regardless of the relevancy, generally interferes with the ongoing discussion.