ETHICS OPINION 476-1959 SPECIALIZED LEGAL SERVICE

NUMBER 476

QUESTION.

 

Please advise me whether the following announcement on a card sent to lawyers only would be proper:

 

“A B C

Attorney at Law

(Address)

(Telephone)

 

takes pleasure in announcing to the profession his availability as OF COUNSEL in the collection of judgments.”

 

ANSWER.

 

The proposed announcement is disapproved.

 

In our Opinion No. 375, we stated that “an attorney may properly send to lawyers only, both known and unknown to him, an announcement which includes a statement of intention to specialize in a particular branch of the law”.

 

Canon 46 provides as follows: “Where a lawyer is engaged in rendering a specialized legal service directly and only to other lawyers, a brief dignified notice of that fact, couched in language indicating that it is addressed to lawyers, inserted in legal periodicals and like publications, when it will afford convenient and beneficial information to lawyers desiring to obtain such service, is not improper.”

 

Acting as counsel in the collection of judgments is not a “specialized legal service” within Canon 46, nor a recognized “branch of the law” within the meaning of our Opinion No. 375.

 

Dated: February 18, 1959.