Regulation of Lawyers' Use of Competitive Keyword Advertising

Authors

Eric Goldman, Santa Clara University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2016

Abstract

Lawyers have enthusiastically embraced search engine advertisements triggered by consumers’ keywords, but the legal community remains sharply divided about the propriety of buying keyword ads triggered by the names of rival lawyers or law firms (“competitive keyword advertising”). This Essay surveys the regulation of competitive keyword advertising by lawyers and concludes that such practices are both beneficial for consumers and legitimate under existing U.S. law - except in North Carolina, which adopted an anachronistic and regressive ethics opinion that should be reconsidered.

Comments

Forthcoming in the University of Illinois Law Review

Automated Citation

Eric Goldman, Regulation of Lawyers' Use of Competitive Keyword Advertising (2016),
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/facpubs/880