Ethics Hotline & Opinions

Ethics Docket No. 1995-10

MARYLAND STATE BAR ASSOCIATION, INC.

COMMITTEE ON ETHICS

ETHICS DOCKET NO. 1995-10

(1) Solicitation of business by attorney who is a licensed real estate agent and salesperson (2) Advertising: Use of flyers placed on windshields of cars in parking lots; use of flyers at real estate open houses

You indicate that you will shortly be a licensed real estate salesperson and that one of the common and accepted methods in the real estate business used to solicit business is the ""cold call."" You ask whether you may, during cold calls to solicit business, disclose that your are an attorney, and if not, at what point in a real estate business relationship may you disclose that you are a lawyer and offer legal services. Secondly, you ask whether you may include the fact that you are an attorney in direct mail advertising at open houses, which are used to solicit real estate business. Your third inquiry is whether you may put flyers on windshields in parking lots advertising the fact that you are an attorney offering legal services.

We direct your attention to Rule 7.2(a) which limits lawyer advertising to communications that do not involve personal contact. Since a telephone call involves personal contact, the Committee is of the opinion that you must refrain from mentioning that you are a lawyer during a solicitation ""cold call"". See Ethics Opinion 87-2 (a copy of which is attached).

This Committee cannot express an opinion as to 'when, or whether, in a given situation, you may properly offer services to prospective or actual real estate clients. In reaching such determinations for yourself, you should be guided by Rule 7.3(a), which states:

A lawyer may initiate in person contact with perspective clients for the purpose of obtaining professional employment only in the following circumstances and subject to the requirements of paragraph (b):

(1) if the prospective client is a close friend, relative, former client or one whom the lawyer reasonably believes to be a client;

(2) Under the auspices of a public or charitable legal services organization; or

(3) Under the auspices of a bona fide political, social, civic, fraternal employee or

trade organization whose purposes include but are not limited to providing or recommending legal services, if the legal services are related to the principal of the organization.

As to your second inquiry, the issue of whether you can properly mention that you are a lawyer

in advertising that is made available to the public at open houses will depend on whether you are present at the open house and whether you are so closely identified with the advertising that the circumstance would amount to an in person contact.

Your third inquiry involves an issue that has been previously addressed by this Committee. In Ethics Opinion 87-2, the Committee opined that placement of written advertisements on windshields of automobiles in parking lots is clearly not ""in person"" contact but is a type of contact by written material and appears to be the type of advertising through public media described in Rule 7.2(a). In Ethics Docket 87-2 the Committee has opined that the rule allows such means of distribution assuming that there is o in person contact in placing the advertising.

References: Ethics Docket  1987-2

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