Madrid Bar against COVID-19 free legal assistance publicity

The Madrid Bar Association (ICAM) has made a statement against “advertising practices that are proliferating by law firms that may contravene our deontological rules.”

The Madrid Bar cites article 25 of Spanish Lawyers bylaws and article 6 of the Code of Ethics that prohibit those advertising practices that are an attack on the dignity of the profession, that incite to litigation and that are addressed, by themselves or by third parties, to direct or indirect victims of catastrophes, public calamities or other events that have produced a high number of affected persons, at times or circumstances that condition the free choice of lawyer. “Even more so -continues the text- in situations like the one that our society is experiencing, cruelly afflicted by a pandemic that unfortunately continues over time” and qualifies as “particularly repugnant those advertising behaviours of lawyers or firms that unashamedly seek to profit from the suffering of their potential clients disregarding the rules and principles of professional ethics that bind and oblige the legal profession, in which not everything is valid.”

ICAM also states that “in these challenging times of crisis, it is necessary that the legal profession, as a servant of Justice, maintains its essential values and thus transmits them to the citizens” and warns it will take legal action against these behaviours in matters of publicity and free competition, that can be qualified as very serious.