The Board of Governors has agreed to suspend enforcement of the advertising rule that prohibits nonlawyers from appearing in electronic ads unless they identify themselves as a nonlawyer, but only as it applies to underwriting announcements on National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.

The board, however, affirmed that the existing Bar rules still apply to such announcements.

The board took that action at its Coral Gables meeting on the recommendation of the Board Review Committee on Professional Ethics. The board also approved committee recommendations relating to guidelines for offshoring legal work and on using the word “trust” in lawyer ads.

Board member David Prather, chair of the committee, said the committee recommended the suspension because a rule change is pending before the court. The difficulty comes because federal regulations prevent members of the law firm from reading the sponsorship spot on NPR stations and require that station announcers do it. The sponsorship announcements are typically too short to include a disclaimer, which also is not allowed under the federal rules. The same rules apply for public television.

“The surrounding circumstances make it clear that the announcer is speaking as a representative of the radio station and not a member of the law firm,” Prather said.

The Standing Committee on Advertising recommended the same course of action, he noted.

On offshoring, the board approved the BRCPE recommendation to accept guidelines prepared by the Professional Ethics Committee, and now posted on the Bar’s Web site.

Those provide advice to lawyers who are considering using foreign companies to provide paralegal and other services. The guidelines, and a recent ethics opinion, note that offshoring can provide special challenges to the lawyer to protect client confidentiality, client interests, and supervise the outsourced legal work.

The ethics committee is also considering possible Bar rules to address offshoring.

On using the word “trust,” the board approved the BRCPE recommendation to recede from two prior actions that had disallowed the use of that word in lawyer ads. That action conformed to more recent advertising decisions.

Prather and Bar Ethics Counsel Elizabeth Tarbert said the earlier decisions had found that using “trust” characterized the quality of legal services being offered, but that Bar staff and the committee now disagree with that action. Prather said that trust is a tenet of the attorney-client relationship, and hence should not be universally banned in lawyer ads, but must be determined by the context in which the term is used.

Added Tarbert: “In some respects all the lawyers are saying is they are fulfilling their obligations under the rules of professional conduct.”

Prather also reported that the BRCPE has begun discussing guidelines for a review of the Bar’s advertising rules. That will comply, he said, with a request to the Bar from the Supreme Court in December 2007 to “undertake an additional and contemporary study of lawyer advertising, which shall include public evaluation and comments about lawyer advertising, as recommended by Mr. Bill Wagner in his written and oral comments to the Court.”

Wagner argued that the review that led to the amendments ruled on by the court should have been broader and looked at advertising in the broader context of marketing by lawyers and law firms.