Announcement cards by lawyers entering or returning to private practice from government service may properly contain a brief and dignified reference to the position occupied with the government immediately prior to such entry or return.
John Doe
Former attorney for the
Colorado Public Utilities Commission
Announces
The Opening of Offices for The General Practice of Law
Address
Telephone Number Date
Opinion
In Opinion No. 5 of this Committee, the facts were substantially as set forth above with the exception that the announcement included also a reference to a specialty. The Opinion dealt principally with the ethical propriety of the reference to a specialty. The Opinion also indicated that the reference to the former governmental service was an added element of impropriety and cited as authority for that proposition ABA Opinion 264. That ABA Opinion has since been reversed by ABA Opinion No. 301 issued in November of 1961.
Without in any way altering any other portion of Opinion No. 5 of this Committee, this Committee wishes to revise Opinion No. 5 insofar as it relates to the propriety of reference to former governmental service in announcements to persons other than local lawyers. It is the opinion of this Committee that it is proper for a member of the profession to explain his absence from private practice, where such is the primary purpose of the announcement, by a brief and dignified reference to his immediate prior employment.
This does not, of course, mean that the Committee condones the use of such an announcement for the purpose of obtaining employment in matters involving the government department with which the lawyer was previously connected. For this reason, any such announcement should be limited to the immediate past connection of the lawyer with the government, made upon his leaving that position to enter private practice. Such an announcement has no purpose but to advise those concerned that the lawyer, identified as one who has up to now held a specific government position, is again available in the private practice for legal services. But if repeated under other circumstances, it could have no such purpose, and would fall within the prohibition of Canon 27 as construed in ABA Opinion 264 and our Opinion No. 5.
