Web Counsel Notes LEGAL WEBSITES:
CREATION, MARKETING,
DISINTERMEDIATION AND ETHICS Table of Contents IX.A BRIEF REVIEW OF LEGAL ETHICS AND WEBSITES A. A NEW WAY TO COMMUNICATE For legal ethics purposes, a website is a new way to communicate. It combines text and pictures like print, but also has the mass media access availability of radio and the interactive elements of a personal meeting. In addition, the interaction is recipient initiated and huge amounts of information can be stored and quickly delivered. The combination of these formerly disparate elements mean that websites do not always fit within the ethical restrictions drafted for traditional media. B. A VARIETY OF USES FOR LAW FIRM WEBSITES Law firm websites are being used for matters that have been traditionally regulated such as descriptions of the firm, its attorneys and their practice areas. Other matters do not fit within traditional uses such as jumpsites of Internet hyper-text links or on-line seminars conducted at firm's website. Websites are being used to recruit employees, and, increasingly, as components in providing legal services to clients and the firm's own attorneys via passworded "extranet" sites. Unlike traditional physical media or linear electronic media where such activities were in physically separate objects or temporally separated all of these listed functions are normally jumbled together at the firm's website. C. ETHICAL ISSUES IN A WIRED WORLD | |
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