A supplemental briefing submitted by the New Jersey State Bar Association (NJSBA) following the Supreme Court’s grant of the organization’s petition for review, urges the Court to reconsider findings in the opinion rendered by the Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics 735 (ACPE 735), finding that an attorney can purchase a hyperlink in the name of a competitor lawyer to divert the user directly to the purchasing lawyer’s website. An inquiry was made to the committee last year as to whether this practice violated the Rules of Professional Conduct. The committee found there was no violation. The Bergen County Bar Association filed a challenge to this finding last year as well, and both petitions for review were granted, permitting additional briefs to be submitted.
The NJSBA argued that the opinion focused on the practice permitting an attorney to pay for an indirect communication that misleads a consumer, rather than the actual website containing the searched name. In finding that this was not a violation, the committee found that this act was not a “communication” and therefore fell outside the scope of RPC 8.4, addressing misconduct and prohibiting an attorney from engaging in conduct that involves dishonesty, fraud, misrepresentation, or conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.
