I recently read two stories about lawyer advertising, this one about $20,000 ads in the "Super Lawyers" publication and this one about an Indiana law firm that spent more than $500,000 for naming rights in a football stadium. The two marketing ploys seemed pretty similar to me, but only the Super Lawyers ads have gotten the attention of the legal ethics advertising police: New Jersey's Committee on Attorney Advertising claimed that such ads are "likely to create an unjustified expectation as to results." Thankfully, the New Jersey Supreme Court stayed the enforcement of the opinion, but there are ongoing hearings in New Jersey to decide the issue once and for all.
Personally, I don't see how the public is any more likely to have unreasonable expectations after reading a "Super Lawyers" ad than after seeing a law firm's name in a prominent place in a football stadium. Obviously, stadium naming rights are not indicative of quality or ethics, as anyone who used to go to Enron Field surely knows. But the public is savvy enough to know that. And I don't see how an ad in a publication called "Super Lawyers" is any different. Indeed, there is simply no decent empirical data to suggest that lawyer advertisements of this sort cause any unjustified expectations among potential clients.
Ultimately, bar disciplinary authorities review lawyer advertising using a standard that makes Potter Stewart's "I know it when I see it" test seem clear. In fact, I bet I could do a better job predicting what Justice Stewart would have considered to be obscenity than guessing what New Jersey would view as misleading advertising. Now that's truly obscene.
For a profession that spends its time developing and refining the law, we can do a whole lot better than the current haphazard approach. We should start by allowing lawyers to market themselves with the same freedom as other professionals and then focus on issues that truly matter to the profession, the public, and the justice system.