The Dancing Cash Register

Certain events are seasonal. One annual event I like to recall is the annual publishing of the local telephone book yellow pages. Why? Because every year there would be a tide of complaints followed by a trickle when the new telephone book was opened to the Attorney section and readers would find the full page yellow page ad of the dancing cash register with the 24 hour 1 – 800 telephone number of the attorney looking for personal injury cases. How could the State Bar let this happen? What has the profession been reduced to? What was once a noble profession has been reduced to a garish dollar sign (I think some years, in fact, the garish dollar sign was used instead of the dancing cash register – a sketch of an old fashioned cash register with stick legs and arms and I think a little smiling head with a beret on top). What is the State Bar doing to stop this disgusting, base advertising? Alas, nothing. The Supreme Court had spoken: you can't regulate bad taste. If the advertisement is not false, deceptive or misleading the bar cannot prohibit it. Some say the advent of attorney advertising was the beginning of the end of respectful law practice.