Ad rules, no new fees budget on the agenda: Board of Governors also to take up revenue splits and gay adoptions at its Tallahassee meeting.

Proposed new advertising rules and a possible alteration of how revenues are split between the Bar and its sections are on the agenda for the Bar Board of Governors' April 8 meeting. The board is also expected to revisit the gay adoption issue, although in a somewhat different form.

And if that won't keep it busy, the board will get the 2005-06 budget--which calls for no increase in annual fees--to consider and pass on first reading.

The Advertising Task Force 2004 has been working since early last year reviewing Bar ad rules and taking public testimony. The task force presented its final recommendations to the board at its January 28 meeting.

Among the recommendations, the task force proposed a voluntary ad screening program. That would give lawyers immunity from prosecution if they submit their ads for review and don't publish until the Bar approves them, and then a rule violation was later discovered. The task force also recommended against a proposal that would have extended the 30-day waiting period for direct mail solicitations to criminal and traffic cases.

Board members, though, have said they may consider alternatives to both of those proposals. One would be a requirement that all ads that contain more than basic, approved information be submitted to the Bar for approval before those ads are published or aired. Some also favored extending the direct mail solicitation waiting period to criminal and traffic cases.

Another potential point of debate is the task force's recommendation that lawyer Internet Web sites be treated as information provided at the request of a potential client. That would exempt the sites from the ad rules, although they would still be bound by general rules that prohibit them from being false, misleading, or deceptive.

But some board members have said they favor regulating Web sites, likening them to Yellow Pages ads and saying in a technological age they could be even more heavily used by consumers in the future.

The issue with the sections is over how revenues for CLE courses are split and how the Bar supports section operations in other ways. A report to the board in January noted that the Bar loses hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in direct and indirect administrative support for the sections, more than is made from CLE profits. The report also noted that a couple years ago, the Bar lost more than $200,000 on section CLE operations, although policies have been changed to make that less likely.

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