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opinion L E GAL E THICS BY PHILIP SLAYTON Advertising in an electronic age Click away on sponsored links all you like; the old-fashioned problems remain. A dvertising by lawyers has long been a tricky issue in Canada. Once, it couldn't be done at all — stopped by law society rules. Over the past few years, restrictions have been eased, bit by bit, province by province. Recently, the Competition Bureau of Canada suggested the situation still isn't good enough and that almost any rules limiting advertising by profes- sionals go beyond legitimate consum- er protection. (More on the Competi- tion Bureau later.) We're no longer just talking about that big sign on a building by the airport that has a law firm's name in huge, illuminated red letters; or a personal-injury lawyer's adver- tisement on the side of a bus; or the logo-included message placed by a Bay Street firm in the financial pages of a national newspaper proclaiming the number of mega-deals it did in 2007. We now live in a wonderful new elec- tronic age. Welcome to advertising by lawyers on Google. Here's how Google advertising works. Pick a key word or phrase likely to be searched and that relates in some compelling way to the legal services you provide. Create an advertisement for those services that includes a link to your web site. Arrange with Google to have your advertisement appear in the shaded "sponsored links" section next to the search results that pop up when your chosen key words are searched. (It's easy to do all of this online, at www.adwords.google.com) Your hope is that potential clients will be directed in this way to your practice. How do you pay for Google adver- tising? This is the interesting part. You pay every time someone clicks on your sponsored link. How much do you pay? The price per click is set by an auction of search terms. When I checked the other day (on www.cwire.org), I saw that if you want your advertisement to appear next to the search term "personal injury law- yer Michigan," it will cost you US$65.85 every time someone clicks on your link. It's US$47.74 for "automobile accident lawyers" and US$44.52 for "truck acci- dent lawyers." A cursory survey of search terms and sponsored links shows that Canadian lawyers are starting to play this game. The search terms "province of Ontario personal injury lawyer" and "brain in- jury Canada" each produces one Cana- dian law firm. The term "immigration lawyers Canada" generates quite a long Canadian list, although some of the ad- vertisers look to be consultants rather than law firms. Whether or not a click produces busi- ness for the advertiser doesn't matter; the advertiser pays anyway. This creates opportunity for the cyberspace equiva- lent of sending pizzas at midnight to the girlfriend who dumped you. Just spend the day clicking on the link of a law firm you don't like and stick it with a big bill for nothing. Adam Liptak, writing in The New York Times ("Competing for Clients, www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com M ARCH 2008 27 TODD JULIE