Morgan & Morgan recently sued the Florida Bar over a rule that prohibits lawyers from using a celebrity’s voice or image in advertising. The firm says the restriction violates the First Amendment.
The lawsuit has already revived a familiar debate about lawyer advertising. Are rules like Florida’s restrictions preventing law firms from marketing themselves the way virtually every other business does? Or are there legitimate reasons to treat advertising for legal services differently?
I think there is another part of this conversation that deserves just as much attention, particularly here in New Jersey.
Drive around our state and you can see John Morgan on billboards advertising Morgan & Morgan. He may be one of the most recognizable lawyers in America.
But John Morgan is not licensed to practice law in New Jersey.
That raises a question I think our profession ought to be willing to ask: What does the person driving past that billboard think?
Does that person believe John Morgan could be his lawyer? Does he believe the lawyer whose face dominates the advertisement practices law in New Jersey? Does he understand that if he calls the number, his case would be handled by other lawyers working under the Morgan & Morgan name?
Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn’t.
But that is precisely why attorney advertising rules exist.
New Jersey does not leave lawyer advertising entirely to the marketplace. We have Rules of Professional Conduct governing what lawyers may say in advertisements, and a Committee on Attorney Advertising appointed by the New Jersey Supreme Court. RPC 7.1 prohibits lawyers from making false or misleading communications about themselves or their services. RPC 7.2 permits lawyer advertising, but subjects it to those restrictions and requires advertisements to be predominantly informational.
Those rules aren’t there because lawyers are supposed to be terrible marketers. They exist because hiring a lawyer is different from buying most other things.
That distinction is important as we watch Morgan & Morgan challenge Florida’s celebrity rule.
Morgan & Morgan wants to run advertisements in Florida featuring celebrities such as Shaquille O’Neal, Frankie Muniz, and John Daly, just as it does elsewhere. The firm argues that prohibiting those advertisements violates its First Amendment rights.
The courts will decide that constitutional question. But I think there is a separate question that matters just as much: Is the advertisement misleading?
A celebrity is not a lawyer merely because he appears in an advertisement for a law firm. And if that celebrity has never been represented by the firm and has no firsthand knowledge of its lawyers or their work, what exactly is the basis for telling the public that this is a firm they should hire?
That is different from asking whether celebrities are allowed to endorse products. Of course they are. The issue is what their appearance communicates when the product being advertised is legal representation.
For years, Morgan & Morgan has been testing the limits of what legal advertising can look like. Whatever you think of the firm, there is no question that it has changed the way lawyers think about marketing. It understood earlier than most that a law firm could become a national consumer brand. It spent heavily, experimented constantly and refused to accept the old idea that lawyer advertising had to look and sound like lawyer advertising.
A lot of firms followed.
But there is a difference between modernizing lawyer advertising and removing meaningful boundaries from it.
And the question I keep coming back to is surprisingly simple:
What does the consumer reasonably believe?
Consider the celebrity issue.
If I see Shaquille O’Neal selling a pair of shoes, I understand what is happening. He’s a celebrity spokesperson. I don’t assume he designed the shoe or inspected the factory.
Legal services are different.
A person looking for a lawyer may be injured, frightened, or dealing with one of the most consequential problems of his or her life. If a celebrity appears and tells that person to hire a particular law firm, it is fair to ask what the celebrity actually knows about that firm.
Was the celebrity a client? Has the celebrity worked with these lawyers? Does the celebrity know anything about their legal ability, how they handle cases, or how they treat clients?
If the answer to all of those questions is no, then the concern is not whether lawyers should be permitted to use creative advertising. The concern is whether the advertisement creates an impression that has no real basis behind it.
Now consider the question from the opposite direction.
If the person prominently featured in the advertisement actually is a lawyer, but isn’t licensed in the state where the advertisement appears, what does the consumer believe then?
To me, that’s an even more interesting question.
Morgan & Morgan’s own New Jersey website recognizes the distinction. Its New Jersey pages tell visitors that the attorney featured on the site is licensed in Florida and direct consumers to a separate attorney page to find lawyers licensed in their state. Some pages go further and caution that attorneys shown in photographs may not be licensed in the viewer’s state.
That disclosure strikes me as meaningful.
But it also makes me wonder about the billboard a New Jersey driver passes at 50 miles per hour.
Is the distinction equally clear there?
Should a consumer be able to look at a lawyer advertisement and understand who is actually offering to represent them?
I think the answer has to be yes.
There is another reason this matters.
Morgan & Morgan operates at a scale almost no law firm can match. Reuters reported that the firm spent an estimated $218 million on advertising in 2024.
When a firm with that kind of marketing power expands the boundaries of lawyer advertising, it doesn’t merely change what Morgan & Morgan can do. It changes the competitive marketplace for everyone.
Smaller firms then face a choice.
Do we follow?
Do we adopt advertising techniques that push closer to the limits of our professional rules because competitors are doing it?
Or do we take a conservative approach to those rules and accept whatever competitive disadvantage comes with it?
That is where this stops being a story about Morgan & Morgan and becomes a conversation the entire profession should be having.
Some lawyers see Morgan & Morgan doing what aggressive marketers have always done: finding every available way to capture attention in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
Others see a legal advertising arms race in which firms with enormous budgets can afford to test every boundary while firms trying to stay comfortably within the rules are left competing on different terms.
But competition cannot be the only consideration.
I’ve practiced law long enough to remember when lawyer advertising itself was controversial. I don’t want to go backwards. Lawyers should be able to tell people who they are, explain what they do, and compete for business. We should use modern media. We should build brands. And our professional rules should recognize the way people actually consume information today.
But there still has to be a line.
That line shouldn’t exist to protect established law firms from competition or preserve some antiquated notion of how dignified a lawyer is supposed to appear.
It should exist to protect the public from being misled.
That’s why I think the most useful question raised by Morgan & Morgan’s lawsuit isn’t simply whether Shaquille O’Neal can appear in a lawyer advertisement.
It’s what the person seeing any lawyer advertisement reasonably believes after seeing it.
Do they know who the lawyer is?
Do they know whether that lawyer practices in their state?
If a celebrity is endorsing the firm, do they understand that person may never have been represented by the firm and may have no firsthand knowledge of its lawyers or their work?
Most importantly, do they have an accurate understanding of who they may actually be hiring?
Those aren’t old-fashioned concerns. They’re consumer-protection concerns.
The rules governing lawyer advertising should be clear enough for lawyers to follow and strong enough to protect the people those rules were written for.
Because competition among law firms is healthy. Confusion about who is actually offering to be your lawyer — or why someone is telling you to hire them — is not.
Michael J. Epstein, a Harvard Law School graduate, is a trial lawyer and managing partner of The Epstein Law Firm, P.A., a law firm based in New Jersey.
The post Morgan & Morgan Is Testing The Limits Of Lawyer Advertising. The Rest Of Us Should Pay Attention. appeared first on Above the Law.