Law firms that advertise and their marketing teams expressed fear last September as the changes were being introduced. Some feared they would be difficult for marketing experts to understand or that the bureaucratic process by which they are approved would be cumbersome.

But a year later, most people have become comfortable with the changes.

"They are as content as 10,000 lawyers can be," State Bar Counsel David Clark said. "Generally, we're getting a lot of cooperation. People are pretty compliant in submitting their ads."

Under the revised rules, law firms must submit advertisements for review within 15 days of going live on TV, billboards, in print or other media. They can also submit the ads ahead of time for prelaunch approval.

Ads cannot be materially misleading, cannot feature actors or models without disclaimers indicating they are not lawyers and must include language indicating they are paid advertisements.

Thus far, the bar's advertising committee has reviewed about 1,100 submissions.

Only a few alterations were requested by the bar, and just two ads have resulted in disciplinary hearings for the lawyers involved.

Surprisingly, only seven ads were submitted for preapproval. A year ago, the bar expected more law firms, particularly those with a high volume of ads such as personal injury firms, to submit ads for preapproval.

Clark said the small number of ads submitted for preapproval indicates lawyers and marketers are at ease with the revised rules and have faith in the objectivity of the review process.

Legal marketers in Las Vegas generally agree with that assessment.

"In general it's been a whole lot better than I anticipated it being," said Darcy Neighbors, a legal marketing expert and owner of Consultants in Marketing. "I anticipated a lot more speed bumps - an administrative nightmare - but it's really been a relatively smooth transition for us and an easy thing to administer."

Advertising specialists, though, aren't too thrilled with one change: The disclaimer rules.

The regulations require ads be prominently identified as such - something marketers say would be obvious in all but the most misleading ads.

Most don't object to including the disclaimer, just to rules dictating the size, color and placement of such notices.

"The biggest pet peeve is the font thing," Neighbors said. "The fact that I have to put 'This is an ad' on anything that goes out, double the font size of anything else, in red ink - I really don't think that's fair to the legal industry at all. Nobody else has to do that. It detracts from the branding of the firms and from the messaging of the piece."

Clark indicated that after a review of the program, a few rules would be tweaked, mostly clarification of language.

He said it was unlikely the rules would stay the same forever, and they could be updated as issues arise.

A review of the rules is likely to become another heated debate. The issue of legal advertising has been controversial in Nevada for years.

As the legal market grows, more firms resort to ads to get their name into the public eye. But many of the larger, older commercial firms in Las Vegas still object to ads in the belief that they degrade the profession. Some refuse to advertise at all.

Images of lawyers swirling in tornadoes or running around TV screens in costume are particularly irksome to the more-traditional commercial firms.

The State Bar decided it had no choice but to alter its advertising rules after the U.S. Supreme Court came down with a number of decisions stating that bar associations could not ban advertising outright or bar advertisements based on subjective measures such as taste.

Previous rules in Nevada banned advertisements considered by a committee of lawyers to be distasteful. They were challenged in court by prominent personal injury attorney Glen Lerner - long known for flamboyant television and billboard ads.

Lerner did not respond to calls for comment.

After the decision to amend the rules, Lerner has not pursued his lawsuit against the State Bar, according to Ron Thompson, an attorney with Santoro Driggs, which represented the bar in the Lerner case.

"Most people would agree the new rules are, in form and structure, fine," Thompson said. "The new rules got rid of the (freedom of) speech issues from the old rules. Now they just can't be misleading. That's made it easier for the State Bar to apply the rules. The test is no longer subjective. False and misleading is a lot easier to figure out than what comports with proper taste. In that view the rules have been a success."

And the ban on misleading ads, while preserving freedom of speech, has led to a decrease in the more outrageous ones, Neighbors said.

"As I watch TV and look at the stuff other marketing firms have been doing, I think some of the sensationalism has been reduced, which is probably what needed to happen," she said. "It's kept the level of credibility high."

Stephanie Tavares covers utilities and law for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at 259-4059 or at tavares@lasvegassun.com.