Advertising for Lawyers: Freedom meets Prosperity
By Chidi Nwachukwu
The
legal profession is one of the most respectable professions in the
world nay Nigeria . But has advertising made any difference? Are
Lawyers more respected or richer in jurisdictions where the Law allows
for full blown advertising than where it does not. This tiny piece of
work will make an attempt to answer this question at least as I see it.
The
standard argument is that Lawyers are not allowed to advertise in
Nigeria . But if the gallery of rules in rule 39-44 of the rules of
professional conduct does not permit advertising,
then what is it? For instance, rule 39 says, subject to paragraph 2 and
3 of this rule a Lawyer may engage in advertising or promotion in
connection with his practice provided it (a) is fair and proper in all
the circumstances and (b) complies with the provision of these rules.
Rule 39 (2) says that Lawyers shall not engage or
be involved in any advertising or promotion of his practice of Law
which ( a) is inaccurate or likely to mislead (b) is likely to diminish
public confidence in the legal profession or administration of justice
or otherwise bring the legal profession into disrepute
Generally,
the above rules forms part of business ethics that is common to other
business enterprises. So the question should be, how much advertising
do we need in an environment of predominantly illiterate public who
barely know what Lawyers do.
Nigerian
Lawyers in practice already advertise their trades through interviews,
articles, public lectures e.t.c. What is yet to be seen is putting up
billboards or promoting their practice through the print and electronic
media. We are yet to see Lawyers holding signboards in public places
urging passersby to come for quick divorce as accounted by Funke
Aboyade in her recent article.
The
idea that advertising for Lawyers could injure the reputation of the
profession or give room for unnecessary competition that may promote
mediocrity is already oversold. Such position has lost its meaning in
the context of global trade where business has gone borderless
including legal services. If we look critically at other industries
such as Banking, we will realize that advertising only help to sharpen
the skills of operators thereby drawing more customers or else they
will wither.
Contrary
to the fears of many, full blown creative advertising on the
billboards, radio or television will only force Lawyers to retool their
skills or loose their clients to those who appears better. Simply, it
will lead to healthy competition as long as the rules are complied
with. It will also give better branding to Lawyers especially to those
cynics who think that Lawyers are not known beyond noisy radicalism.
The
most powerful point to note is that, through advertising we educate the
society about what we do and how we do it. Most Nigerians do not know
Lawyers beyond courtroom business, the reason why they report virtually
every incident to the police including contractual agreements which
should ordinarily involve Lawyers.
When
society understands the rules of justice and how easily Lawyers can
help them resolve their conflicts either on business claims or divorce
because we cannot pretend that these things happen, it keeps them away
from self help.
With full blown advertising, the legal industry will definitely generate more money and provide job opportunities for many and of
course more respect. This is more so as a recent study found that a
freer a country is, the better its citizens are. Freedom here includes
allowing Lawyers to advertise their services to the public in the
Languages they understand.
We
must not undermine the service sector in which the legal profession
belongs because it provides a great number of jobs in most countries
.As a country introduces more freedom its economy also begin to grow as
shown by the heritage foundation ( a conservative think tank), which prepared an
index that measures the impact of laws, regulations and government
polices on the economy. The index classifies the government of
Singapore and the United States as among the least restrictive And
those of Russia and Cuba as the most restrictive. The result is that
Singapore and United States are relatively wealthy countries as against
Russia , Cuba or Nigeria :
Full blown advertising for Lawyers in Nigeria won’t hurt, it will only help.
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