| Abstract: | When the US Supreme Court gave attorneys in the US the right to advertise their fees for routine legal services, the Court assumed that such fees would fall as a result of attorney advertising. According to economic theory, however, it is not clear what impact seller advertising will have on market prices. A major research effort designed to measure the price effects of attorney advertising in the USA began one year after the Bates decision. Some of the major findings of that study are presented in this paper. While none of the study's results so far indicates that the price effects of attorney advertising in the short run are likely to be substantial, the results suggest that the level of routine legal service fees may fall slightly or remain unchanged in constant dollar terms as a result of attorneys' use of advertising to promote their services and prices. |
