Ethics Opinions
Iowa Supreme Court Board of Professional Ethics and Conduct
Date of Opinion:
06/08/2004
Opinion Number:
04-08
Title:
PHOTO OF LAWYER IN TV AD – HUGHES
Opinion:
You have inquired whether an attorney’s television advertisement may include the attorney’s picture. We presume your inquiry involves a still picture of the attorney’s likeness only.
DR 2-101 (B)(5)(a) of the Iowa Code of Professional Responsibility for Lawyers specifically allows Iowa attorneys to advertise on television It provides in part:
“In the case of television, no visual display shall be allowed except that allowed in print as articulated by the announcer.”
The first question to be addressed is thus: Can a lawyer use his picture in a print advertisement? DR 2-101(C) specifies the allowable content of an attorney’s advertisement. A photograph or picture of an attorney is not included. However the Board of Professional Ethics and Conduct has previously acknowledged the use of an attorney’s photograph in print advertising in formal ethics opinion 97-29. In that opinion the Board determined that if a newspaper column by a lawyer included the lawyer’s picture it was an advertisement and had to comply with the advertising rules of Canon 2 of the Iowa Code of Professional Ethics and Conduct.
So that there may be no confusion in the future, it is the opinion of the Board that the rules for attorney advertising, as set out in Canon 2 of the Iowa Code of Professional Ethics and Conduct, do not prohibit the use of the attorney’s photograph in either print advertising or advertising by electronic media, including television. The photograph must, however, be only that of the lawyer in a traditional still photograph, not of the lawyer in a dramatic pose.