Deregulation of Lawyer Advertising in Taiwan—Adopting Contingency Analysis and Comparative Study

• Main Authors: Ji-Yang Zheng, 鄭積揚
• Other Authors: 趙義隆
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/89896911767667945689

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 國際企業學研究所 === 102 === Whether lawyers in Taiwan could or should advertise their service is a long debated issue. Though Taipei Bar Association has announced “The Regulation of Promotion of Legal Service”, which forbids certain types of advertisement including television and radio, it is not recognized by the council and therefore has no binding force. However, The regulation still clearly represents the attitude of the Taipei Bar Association on this issue, so few lawyer would like to “test” where the line is, which explain the reason why we’ve never seen any TV commercial of lawyer service in Taiwan before. According to the recent news, Legislative Yuan has announced that during this session, the issue of lawyer advertising will be listed as an priority on their working agenda, and Taipei Bar Association has also received lots of complaints, calling for deregulating the control of lawyer advertising. As a result, it would be a proper time for us to discuss the issue whether we should allow lawyers in Taiwan to advertise their service. This essay is conducted by both contingency analysis and comparative approach, and will firstly decide whether the scenario of Taiwan legal service industry has changed, and if so, whether that kind of change should lead to the conclusion of allowing lawyers in Taiwan to advertise their service in order to adapt the new scenario. This essay will then uses the comparative approach by legal researching of the regulation of lawyers advertising in United States, United Kingdom, and China, in order to decide whether regulations in Taiwan are following international trend, and if not, is there any legitimate ground for Taiwan, whether cultural, political, or economic, to justify its different approach of regulations. This Essay discovers that the scenario of legal service industry in Taiwan has changed dramatically, no matter from the perspective of social expectation, or of the competition among lawyers. Therefore, continuously forbidding lawyers from advertising may not match the future scenario and even leads to self-contradiction, which also expropriates the right of Taiwan lawyers to communicate with their target customers. Furthermore, according to the comparative approach, not only legal-advanced countries like the U.S. or the U.K. allow their lawyers to advertise their service through various ways; China, where no lawyer exist until 1982, also recognize the freedom of lawyers to do advertisement. It should be an important fact for Taiwan to take into account of when making its own decision of whether deregulate the lawyer advertising control or not.