S. Carolina Adds Controversial Comment to Confidentiality Rule

The South Carolina Supreme Court has added a comment to the state ethics rule on confidentiality requiring lawyers to get informed consent to use information about their representation of a client for advertising purposes, even if that information is publicly available.

The comment also says that “general, open-ended consent is not sufficient.”

The court’s decision flies in the face of how the state bar was trying to amend the rule, and one expert said the rule could be problematic.

In its order, the court noted that it didn’t adopt the state bar’s petition seeking to amend Rule 1.6 to allow ...