Legal Writing

Lewis Carroll and the Virginia Bar Association

I found this weirdly worded disclaimer at a law firm’s web site just the other day:

THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN OUR WEB SITE DESCRIBES LEGAL MATTERS HANDLED IN THE PAST BY OUR ATTORNEYS. OF COURSE, THE RESULTS WE HAVE ACHIEVED DEPEND UPON A VARIETY OF FACTORS UNIQUE TO EACH MATTER. BECAUSE EACH MATTER IS DIFFERENT, OUR PAST RESULTS CANNOT PREDICT OR GUARANTEE A SIMILAR RESULT IN THE FUTURE.

Results cannot predict other results? Well of course they can’t.

Neither can most fortune tellers, but why should a law firm bother to mention it?

According to the firm’s marketing director, it’s required.

Curious, I review the Rules of Professional Conduct, published by the Virginia State Bar, which does have a rule (7.2(a)(3)) that requires attorney advertisements to carry a disclaimer stating that RESULTS CANNOT PREDICT A SIMILAR RESULT!

The statement’s absurd, but why twist the grammar too? Is Virgina’s Code trying to out do New York’s?

New York’s Code requires the following absurd statement on attorney ads:

Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

So, if you hire a New York attorney who’s won some and lost some, you can expect something else altogether.

Full post as published by Set in Style on July 16, 2010 (boomark / email).