Title: Jacksonville Bar Association v. Wilson
Citation: 102 So. 2d 292
Docket Number: N/A
State: Florida
Issuer: Florida Supreme Court
Date: April 23, 1958

102 So. 2d 292 (1958)
The JACKSONVILLE BAR ASSOCIATION, Appellant,
v.
Sam B. WILSON, Individually, as a Member of The Florida Bar, etc., Appellee.

Supreme Court of Florida.
April 23, 1958.
Bedell &amp; Bedell, Jacksonville, for appellant.
Frank T. Cannon, Jacksonville, for appellee.
Harold J. Gallagher, New York City, and Cody Fowler, Tampa, for American Bar Ass'n and J. Lewis Hall, Tallahassee, for Florida Bar, amici curiae.
HOBSON, Justice.
This is an appeal by the Jacksonville Bar Association from a final declaratory decree of Duval County Circuit Court holding that appellant's operation of a lawyer reference service, with attendant publicity and advertising, is in violation of the Code of Ethics, of the American Bar Association, rule B, § 27, 31 F.S.A., and the Integration Rule, art. 11, adopted by this court, 31 F.S.A. Briefs have been filed in behalf of the Florida Bar and the American Bar Association.
The suit leading to the decree appealed from was instituted by a member of the Florida Bar, suing for himself and as representative of a class described as "all attorneys who are not members of the Jacksonville Bar Association, a nonprofit corporation, and who are members of the Florida Bar and who are residents of Duval County, Florida."
The case was determined below upon facts "included in the pleadings and admitted on final argument" and it was stipulated that the taking of testimony would be unnecessary. The facts pertaining to the purpose and operation of the challenged service are most succinctly stated in the regulations governing the Committee on Lawyer Reference Service of the Jacksonville Bar Association, which are appended to the answer. These regulations are prefaced by the following statement:
The regulations go on to provide that the service shall be operated by a Referrer, who is a lawyer functioning under the supervision of a committee of the Bar Association. A prospective client is first interviewed by the Referrer who, if further legal services are required, refers the client to a member of the panel of lawyers who have indicated their willingness to serve. The regulations pertaining to the formation and operation of the panel of lawyers are reproduced verbatim, as follows:
As will readily be observed from the regulations pertaining to the formation of the panel, the organization is in no sense exclusive, but is open to "all members in good standing of the Florida Bar, who practice law in Duval County, Florida." It should also be noted that panel members may list the branches of legal work in which they consider themselves particularly qualified and those branches which they do not care to handle. Thus the Referrer is apprised, as a prospective client would not be, of the availability of specialized legal services, and he is in a far better position to make arrangements for proper disposition of the prospective client's legal affairs than the client would be when confronted with the monolithic listing of attorneys in the telephone directory. From the record herein it appears the service is successful and has been well received by the public.
The ground upon which the circuit court found the service offensive was that its advertising constituted an unethical solicitation of legal business. The following type of advertisement has been published in Jacksonville newspapers:
In the Jacksonville telephone directory a similar advertisement has appeared, which reads as follows:
The solicitation of professional employment by advertisement is condemned by Canon 27, and the stirring up of litigation by Canon 28, of the Canons of Professional Ethics of the American Bar Association, adopted by this court. We are of the opinion that neither canon has been violated by the activities of the Jacksonville Bar Association, but that, to the contrary, the plan before us was conceived and is being executed in the highest traditions of public service.
The prohibition of advertising by lawyers deserves some examination. All agree that advertising by an individual lawyer, if permitted, will detract from the dignity of the profession, but the matter goes deeper than *295 this. Perhaps the most understandable and acceptable additional reasons we have found are stated by one commentator as follows:
Of course, competition is at the root of abuses in advertising. If the individual lawyer were permitted to compete with his fellows in publicity through advertising, we have no doubt that Mr. Hewitt's three points, quoted above, would accurately forecast the result.
But the advertising now before us represents the very antithesis of competition. Here is an organization of lawyers, which all in a given area may join, working cooperatively to lower the barrier between the legal profession and the public. Certainly the public must be attracted, and must be apprised of the availability of the service. We deal every day with cases wherein the client sought legal advice too late, when his affairs had reached the pathological stage and litigation could not be avoided. Counselling, or preventive legal advice before trouble commences, will tend to keep people out of the courts, within the letter and spirit of the Canons of Ethics. And alerting the public to the existence of a service, under bar sponsorship, which will provide such preventive advice at a reasonable fee is not unethical, but must redound to the benefit both of the public and of the bar.
The final declaratory decree appealed from is reversed and the cause remanded with directions to dismiss the suit.
TERRELL, C.J., and THOMAS, THORNAL and O'CONNELL, JJ., concur.