Where's Ben Cowgill?

Ben Cowgill of SoloBlawg recently updated us on his legal ethics blog concerning how Kentucky's Attorney Advertising Commission is now treating blogs by Kentucky lawyers.

In this era of rapidly-emerging technology, agencies like the Advertising Commission are frequently confronted with issues of how they should apply their existing regulations to new kinds of activity. The advent of law-related blogs has created exactly that kind of challenge for agencies charged with the regulation of attorney advertising. Kentucky's Attorney Advertising Commission has met that challenge appropriately.

Cowgill played a central role in helping the Commission in Kentucky arrive at a working policy that strikes what he regards as a "sensible balance" between the Commission's responsibilites to enforce attorney advertising regulations in a fair and consistent manner and the constitutional rights to free speech in a blog.

Professor Volokh wonders if attorneys licensed to practice law in New York State will find it much harder to blog under new advertising rules proposed in that jurisdiction. The regulators have invited feedback on the proposed amendments, which are intended to bring the rules governing lawyer advertising into the computer age. Might lawyers in New York get a sensible resolution, too, like those in Kentucky?

Where's Ben Cowgill when you need him? Enjoying an extended summer vacation from blogging, working from his home office in his amicus briefs, no doubt.