In my state, North Carolina, we have an ethics opinion prohibiting a lawyer from bidding for pay-per-click advertising using another lawyer’s name. For example, I can’t buy Google AdWords ads that pop up when someone searches on my competitor’s name.

Specifically, the 2010 Formal Ethics Opinion 14 (dated April 27, 2012) “rules that it is a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct for a lawyer to select another lawyer’s name as a keyword for use in an Internet search engine company’s search-based advertising program.” 

Clearly, one lawyer can’t advertise by using another lawyer’s name in my state. A few other states have addressed this issue, and it’s worth checking to see the status of the situation in your state.

Google’s Advertising Rules

Interestingly, our State Bar’s policy is more restrictive than the policy that Google imposes on other advertisers. Google prohibits advertisers from using certain terms, specifically trademarked terms, in their ads except in very specific circumstances. For instance, LegalZoom can’t say “LegalZoom Is Better Than Rosen Law Firm,” assuming the phrase “Rosen Law Firm” is trademarked. If LegalZoom did that, we could complain to Google, and it would likely stop running the ad.

LegalZoom can, however, run ads on the keyword “Rosen Law Firm” or on my name, Lee Rosen, if it chooses. The company can’t use my name in the ads, but it can target my business by using my name as a keyword. It can run an ad about LegalZoom when someone types “Lee Rosen” into the search bar.

Striking Back at the Competition

You can do the same thing to LegalZoom and other document preparation services if you like (unless you find some pertinent ethics opinion in your state). You can run ads that say things like “We Fix Computer-Generated Legal Docs or Will Do Them Right the First Time” or whatever other ads you think may be helpful. Maybe “10 Reasons Why a Lawyer Is Better Than a $299 Form.” You just can’t use their trademarked terms in your ads. Of course, Google has other restrictions that might catch you in one way or another and require a rewrite of your ads, but it would certainly be an interesting experiment, and it would mostly succeed.

Just for your information, the term “LegalZoom” gets searched on nearly half a million times a month, according to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

That’s what I’ve got: that’s your food for thought for today. Let’s see what you do with it.

P.S. I’ll probably regret this post when LegalZoom starts using my name as a target keyword for its ads.