A presumably jealous competitor of mine laid an anonymous complaint with the Law Society about this blog. The competitor has a problem with the fact that to the right of the blog there is a link to my website accidentclaim.co.za and that there are some figures indicating settlements that we have achieved for our clients.

The complainant obviously does not feel that members of the public should be aware of successes of achievements of attorneys and have referred the Law Society to an old rule which specifies that attorneys should not publicise any of their successes or achievements!

Unfortunately, for the complainant, that rule has changed and in fact the rule now reads that you cannot refer to your success rate – in other words, you could not have an advert for example, saying that you have a 90% success rate. I am not sure that I agree with even that rule, particularly in light of the Competition Act, and our Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech, which includes commercial freedom of speech, but that is the rule how it stands at the moment.