The Florida Bar has proposed new rules designed to govern lawyer advertising – all advertising, including websites and Internet ads. Those rules also would extend the requirement for pre-approval of ads that now exist for television, radio and most other media.

The rules would require that attorney websites be limited to claims that are “objectively verifiable” and lawyers would be prohibited from using actors and other celebrities to pitch their services unless they are clients.

Earlier this month, a consortium of some of the larger law firms asked the Florida Supreme Court to reject those rules for lawyer websites.

Greenberg Traurig’s Barry Richard  spoke on behalf of the Florida Bar. He said a committee recommended they start with a clean slate and review each rule to determine if it should be retained, or changed, and to restructure them all to make them more simple. The rules over many decades have been changed in a “hodgepodge fashion” and that the result was that they were inconsistent.

Lawyer Tom Julin of Hunton & Williams argued on behalf of the consortium of attorneys.  If you are not inclined to exempt websites, then he suggested they look to ABA rules. They are simple and clear.

“Large law firms are very conservative institutions and they want to do everything they possibly can to comply with whatever rules are out there,” Julin said. “Take websites out of this keep it applicable to television and billboards.”

Justice Barbara Pariente said she believed websites were in a different category than other advertising. “Someone has to go to a website, you don’t have it in your face when you are watching morning TV. I don’t know of any website that employs jingles.”

To see the arguments click here.

In today’s issue of the Daily Business Review Colodny, Fass, Talenfeld, Karlinsky & Abate’s child advocate attorney Howard Talenfeld, offers advice on how scandals can offer opportunities to learn lessons.

“Society must fight the culture of no accountability amid a pervasive tolerance for under-the-radar institutional abuse. Bystanders must speak up. Whistleblowers must be taken seriously. Executives and administrators must act on what they’re told. And society must pursue such claims with the vigor and relentlessness expoited and sexually abused children deserve. These are the lessons we must learn.”

Howard M. Talenfeld is a shareholder with Colodny, Fass, Talenfeld, Karlinsky & Abate, handling children’s rights cases. He is also President of Florida’s Children First, a statewide advocacy organization.

Check out Howard’s article for more tips.

On Tuesday, May 22, the South Florida City Group of the Legal Marketing Association, Southeast Chapter will be hosting a meeting on an important topic affecting law firms and legal marketers, 11 ways to improve business development. The meeting, graciously hosted by Hunton & Williams, is being held at 1111 Brickell Avenue, Suite 2500.

William J. Flannery, J.D. with The WJF Institute,  will cover topics ranging from face-to-face business development to the implementation of worldwide global client-focused teams. This presentation is unique and focuses on best practices  from corporate sales, marketing and global account management to show what law firms can learn from their clients.

Bill’s presentation is the collective knowledge of 40 years in business development, sales, marketing and global account management. This presentation is designed for firms of all sizes, geographic locations and  practice areas. Bill has worked with 136 of the AMLAW 200 and law practices ranging from boutiques to sole practitioners to the very largest.

For more information on the event or to RSVP, please contact Jennifer Clarin at jclarin@boardroompr.com or (954) 370-8999, via SurveyMonkey, http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BMD3826. The event is $20 for LMA members and $40 for non-members.

We look forward to seeing you on May 22!

On Thursday, February 16, the South Florida chapter of NAIOP will be hosting the Awards of Excellence at the Marriott Harbor Beach Hotel in Ft. Lauderdale.

The awards ceremony is celebrating its 30th anniversary and will honor the outstanding real estate achievements of the past year.

The event begins at 6 pm and is expected to end at 9:30. The price per person is $150 for NAIOP members and $165 for non-members. For more information, please call 954-990-5116 or email naiop.info@naiopsfl.org.

For professional service firms, reputation and first impressions are very important.  Promoting and perfecting the personal reputations of those in professional service firms must be more closely and constantly honed and protected.  Any imperfection on the brand can have long-lasting adverse effects that can be difficult to remove. To continue reading this story, click here.

In the age of the Internet where virtually all previous online contents lives forever, reputation management can pose its challenges.  That’s why it is important to closely monitor the Internet, social media and review sites to listen in to what is being said about you – or someone with the same or a similar name.  “Lawyers Struggling at Managing Reputations” as published in the Daily Business Review shows all of us what can happen to an unsuspecting attorney or businessperson, if they do not have a handle on what is being said online.  Simple tools like Google Alerts work well for some while others choose to subscribe to a reputation management monitoring service.  Boardroom uses MyRepMan for selected clients.  You should consider a monitoring program for yourself.

To read the full DBR article, please click here.

Tomorrow the Legal Marketing Association will kick off its 2012 program with “Connecting Costs to Value: Your Role in Driving Revenue.”  If you are an  attorney, marketing and business development professional, marketing partner, managing partner, practice group leader, or manager from law firms/accounting firms, then you should be there!

Nationally recognized as a leader in law firm business development strategy, special guest presenter Silvia Coulter, will discuss what firms can do to build relationships based on loyalty versus cost of services, client growth cycle and process improvement and its impact on the firm’s revenue.

When: TOMORROW! Tuesday, January 17, 2012 from 5 p.m. -7:30 p.m.

• Registration and networking being at 5 p.m.
• Presentation starts at 5:45 p.m.
• Food, fun and networking at 6:30 p.m.

Where: Berger Singerman; 1450 Brickell Avenue Suite 1900, Miami, FL 33131

Cost: Complimentary for lawyers, legal marketing professionals and LMASE members, $25 for other business professionals or non-members

Please RSVP to Jennifer Clarin, jclarin@boardroompr.com (954) 370-8999 or via SurveyMonkey, http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YMJ3ZW7.

Hope you can join us!

The state of Florida is at the forefront of a national trend involving ex-spouses who are tired of paying permanent alimony. The house bill, introduced in November, proposes to make sweeping alimony reforms as it sets caps on alimony based on income and terminates alimony payments when the payer reaches retirement.

The final decision of this bill may mean significant changes for Florida, it will give every divorce the opportunity to be reopened and renegotiated.

The Florida Civil Justice Subcommittee took the bill under advisement on December 7^th. While Florida has been making changes to its alimony laws since 2010, nothing has made an impact similar to what is being proposed now.

Angela Neave, a Boardroom Communications client and family lawyer at Barry I. Finkel, P.A, was featured in a front page article speaking out about the alimony bill.

“My gut reaction is this is a good start, but it won’t pass as it is because it is too drastic,” Neave said.

To read the entire article click here.

To read the full bill, click here.

Our recent LMA media panel led by Boardroom COO Don Silver was a resounding success.  Panelists Julie Kay, Daily Business Review and Paul Brinkmann, South Florida Business Journal did a great job describing the best of the best and worst of the worst law firm crisis management war stories to an audience of mostly senior legal marketing pros at Greenberg Traurig’s Miami office.

The program was moderated by Don Silver, who led off with a brief primer on the top 10 ways that law firms can prepare themselves for and manage through a crisis.  The plan was to have Julie and Paul share a couple of examples of law firm crises they had covered in the past, but the discussion quickly turned into a roundtable with full audience participation.

Lessons learned for speakers and moderators:  Always be aware of what your audience wants.  That’s why the program was almost immediately opened up for member participation and the planned case study exorcise was set aside.

Those wishing to become involved in LMA’s South Florida CityGroup can contact Co-Chairs Jennifer Clarin of Boardroom Communications (954) 370-8999 or Susan Greene of  Becker & Poliakoff (954)985-4124.

For all of you legal and CPA firm marketers, attorneys and service providers, we hope you can join us for the upcoming Legal Marketing Association Crisis Management program being held at Greenberg Traurig in Miami on November 17th.  This is a program Don Silver has moderated several times before, which provides the audience to take part in a real life crisis situation.  Hope you can make it.