Opinion ID: 38
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Subsection 1200.50(c)(5): Irrelevant Techniques

Text: This subsection prohibits advertisements that rely on techniques to obtain attention that demonstrate a clear and intentional lack of relevance to the selection of counsel, including the portrayal of lawyers exhibiting characteristics clearly unrelated to legal competence. N.Y. Comp.Codes R. & Regs., tit. 22, § 1200.50(c)(5). Defendants note that the New York Code of Professional Responsibility has long declared that the purpose of attorney advertising is to educate the public to an awareness of legal needs and to provide information relevant to the selection of the most appropriate counsel. (Appellants' Br. 33-34) (quotation marks omitted) Defendants contend that their rule excluding attention-getting techniques unrelated to attorney competence reflects this principle and so materially advances New York's interest in factual, relevant attorney advertisements. (Appellants' Br. 35) A rule barring irrelevant advertising components certainly advances an interest in keeping attorney advertising factual and relevant. But this interest is quite different from an interest in preventing misleading advertising. Like Defendants' claim that the First Amendment does not protect irrelevant and unverifiable components in advertising, Defendants here appear to conflate irrelevant components of advertising with misleading advertising. These are not one and the same. Questions of taste or effectiveness in advertising are generally matters of subjective judgment. Moreover, as the Task Force Report acknowledged, Limiting the information that may be advertised ... assumes that the bar can accurately forecast the kind of information that the public would regard as relevant. (Task Force Report, App. I, 8) Defendants have introduced no evidence that the sorts of irrelevant advertising components proscribed by subsection 1200.50(c)(5) are, in fact, misleading and so subject to proscription. Significantly, the Task Force Report expressly recognized that communications involving puffery and claims that cannot be measured or verified were not specifically addressed in its proposed rules, although such communications would already be prohibited to the extent that they are false, deceptive or misleading. (Task Force Report, App. I, 9) Insofar as the Task Force Report touched on style and advertising gimmicks designed to draw attention, its recommendations were hortatory only. ( See Task Force Report 70) (quoting the Monroe County Bar Association Project exhorting  but not requiring  lawyers and firms to include only factually accurate and objectively verifiable information in their advertisements, and to minimize devices such as puffery in favor of information relevant to the thoughtful selection of counsel). Moreover, the sorts of gimmicks that this rule appears designed to reach  such as Alexander & Catalano's wisps of smoke, blue electrical currents, and special effects  do not actually seem likely to mislead. It is true that Alexander and his partner are not giants towering above local buildings; they cannot run to a client's house so quickly that they appear as blurs; and they do not actually provide legal assistance to space aliens. But given the prevalence of these and other kinds of special effects in advertising and entertainment, we cannot seriously believe  purely as a matter of common sense  that ordinary individuals are likely to be misled into thinking that these advertisements depict true characteristics. Indeed, some of these gimmicks, while seemingly irrelevant, may actually serve important communicative functions: [they] attract[] the attention of the audience to the advertiser's message, and [they] may also serve to impart information directly. Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 647, 105 S.Ct. 2265. Plaintiffs assert that they use attention-getting techniques to communicate ideas in an easy-to-understand form, to attract viewer interest, to give emphasis, and to make information more memorable. (Appellees' Br. 36) Defendants provide no evidence to the contrary; nor do they provide evidence that consumers have, in fact, been misled by these or similar advertisements. Absent such, or similar, evidence, Defendants cannot meet their burden for sustaining subsection 1200.50(c)(5)'s prohibition under Central Hudson.