While making my daily slog through the entire global set of all webinar-related press releases, blog posts, magazine articles, and rap songs (Why… What do you do with your evenings?) I came upon a curious legal opinion by the Wisconsin State Bar Professional Ethics Committee. Their conclusion is not at all curious. It’s curious that they felt it needed confirmation at all.
Informal Opinion EI-10-01 finds that if a law firm holds an informational webinar or hosts a recording on their website, and puts up a disclaimer stating that the webinar is just general legal information and not advice designed to assist clients, and says that watching it does not create a lawyer-client relationship between the viewer and the firm, AND requires the viewer to click a button agreeing that the webinar is not a legal consultation and does not create a lawyer-client relationship… Well then, by golly, watching the webinar probably does not constitute the automatic initiation of a lawyer-client relationship between the viewer and the firm.
Whew! Dodged a bullet there.
