Formal Opinion 20.
Attorney As Candidate
(1952)

On August 20 the Committee on Legal Ethics issued the following opinion in response to a request from an attorney who is a candidate for the Legislature:

The following is our opinion on the query submitted in your letter of August 13.

"Can an attorney who is a candidate for the State Legislature advertise the fact that he is an attorney and therefore more qualified to represent the public than a layman?"

Canon 27 prohibits solicitation of professional employment. What a lawyer is here seeking is not professional employment but a public office. The general public is entitled to know the qualifications of a candidate for public office to hold that office. Any such candidate should be permitted to inform the voters that he is a lawyer. The candidate should do so in a dignified way as befits a lawyer. He should not use his candidacy, however, as an excuse for advertising that he is a lawyer. If there is any reasonable or rational relationship between the services and functions performed by the holder of a public office and the qualifications of an applicant for that office to perform those services by reason of the fact that he is trained and experienced in the practice of law, the lawyer candidate has a right to call such facts to the attention of the voting public.

[See RPC 7.1]