Advertising Law Jobs - Your Career in Marketing
Enter the vast and exciting world of marketing through some of the finest advertising law jobs on the market!
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Advertising is a cutthroat business - if you’ve seen Mad Men, the real world isn’t far off. But what separates fact from fiction are the rules set in place. A marketing agency simply cannot advertise alcohol to minors, or create too provocative an ad, for example - advertising laws prevent that.
If you’re planning on going to law school and hunting for advertising law jobs specifically, there are many essential things you should know. We have researched everything, from the career paths, to salaries and job prospects, so read on to find out how you too can start a career on the legal side of marketing.
The Advertising Law Job Description
When an advertising firm creates an ad, whether it’s a slogan, a billboard, or a convoluted series of TV ads, it’s not just the boss that needs to approve it. The campaign has to go through the legal department, too, as there’s always a risk of someone’s copyright being infringed, or the ads representing the product in a deceitful manner. That’s where a marketing attorney comes in: This person - or a whole team of them - carries a significant burden, as they need to go over all the ad-related materials and ensure none of them can be a cause for legal action against the company.
Therefore, a marketing firm relies on its legal team to keep track of all the current rules and regulations set by the FTC. Things can get even more complicated if an ad campaign is set to run worldwide. In that case, advertising law jobs entail preempting any possible legal issues for each country the ad creative will be shown in. The scale of this job can and will ramp up quickly; thus, marketing agencies that can afford it often hire entire teams of lawyers instead of relying on a single person.
What Do Advertising Lawyers Do?
Duties
When you take on an advertising law job, you’ll be expected to work with one or more marketing teams, usually on a multitude of projects. Campaigns are mostly digital now, and include a lot of social media, video, and internet ads, but that’s not always a rule. Depending on the company, you might be required to work with traditional mediums, such as billboards, newspaper ads, and even coupons. Therefore, your expertise will need to be pretty broad.
Most advertising attorney jobs consist of these duties on a day-to-day basis:
- Counseling the client’s marketing department
- Reviewing promotional materials to ensure they’re FTC-compliant
- Reviewing claims made by other companies towards the client
- Helping with press releases, newsletters, and other forms of online presence for the company
- Employee education through training, seminars, internal newsletters, etc.
- Keeping up to date with laws and regulations, marketing-related and otherwise
Work Environment
Pretty much all advertising law jobs are office-based. Unlike, say, intellectual property lawyers, whose position can often require court visits, ad lawyers rarely participate in trials. So, if you were looking to avoid courtroom drama, but still want a highly dynamic work environment, this line of work could be one of your top choices. While you may end up traveling around town for different meetings, in most cases, you’ll only work with one big client and stay within their corporate office.
Advertising lawyer jobs often entail working within a more prominent law firm, too. In that case, you’ll be considered an expert on advertising and marketing law, but you won’t have a single big client. Of course, most lawyers seeking to get lucrative jobs in marketing law want to get a position within a lawyer team in a big corporation. That way, they end up working on a more consistent schedule and similar projects, which might be a better fit for some, compared to constantly switching between clients.
Injuries and Illnesses
There aren’t any dangers specific to advertising law careers, at least not in physical terms. You will be working at an office - an environment where hardly anything life-endangering ever happens. That being said, this is often a very stressful career, with a significant workload and tight deadlines. Of course, that too depends on the law firm you end up working with: Some even believe working as a marketing law attorney is as monotonous as a legal job can get. In the end, it’s just a matter of perspective.
Work Schedule
Working as a lawyer in marketing doesn’t often require long hours or working on weekends. It’s mostly a standard nine-to-five job, especially for an entry-level position. Lawyers that decide to pursue the single-client route will, of course, be constrained by their employer’s work hours. That includes any overtime and holidays, if the marketing team requires your services outside of regular work hours. Freelance advertising law jobs are not that common, as most businesses and marketing agencies want someone that can dedicate practically all their time to them. But freelancing can be a good start if you prefer to set your own hours instead of chasing an associate position.
How to Become an Advertising Attorney
The road to becoming a lawyer specialized in marketing doesn’t differ much from other legal career paths. You’ll start by getting a bachelor’s degree, preferably in marketing, and then going to law school.
We’ve already compared advertising to IP lawyers, but the work environment is not their only commonality. Both types of lawyers need to have a firm grasp of intellectual property laws, with advertising attorney jobs requiring a certain level of knowledge of copyrights, administration, and research skills. While you won’t need to be familiar with brands you end up working with, at least in the beginning, you’ll need to possess good computer literacy and know your way around the internet.
Important Qualities
What separates a good lawyer from an amazing one? It’s their skills, of course, but also how they employ them. Here’s what you’ll need to know before applying for any marketing attorney jobs:
- FTC rules and regulations knowledge: These are an ever-evolving set of (very) detailed rules which outline what, where, how, and when advertisers are allowed to promote products and services. Keeping up to date and knowing them by heart will be your top priority.
- Research skills: When a marketing agency comes up with a slogan or an ad, you need to be able to quickly and precisely find out whether that creative is breaking someone’s copyrights, and whether the campaign is truthful and ethical.
- Communication skills: Every single job in advertising law requires teamwork. It includes lots of back-and-forth with the marketing team, checking over every bit of advertising they create, confirming everything’s in line with laws and regulations, and not stepping on anyone’s toes in the process.
- Attention to detail: You need to notice any and all possible issues with an ad campaign. One oversight, however small, can lead to heaps of legal trouble for your client. After all, it’s not dangerous - but the job is far from laid-back.
Education
Your advertising law career starts at the same point every other legal career does - at university. While working towards an undergraduate degree, future lawyers that seek to work within the advertising industry would be well-served by a marketing-related degree. While getting one, they should also focus on learning about statistics, research techniques, administration, and everything else that will prepare them for law school.
Once in law school, prospective marketing lawyers should focus on subjects related to advertising law careers. That, of course, means studying advertising law, but some law schools don’t offer this sort of specialization. Therefore, you might need to find extracurricular courses to make up for that. Other courses worth taking are administrative law, internet law, pre-trial practice, and anything regarding intellectual property, trademarks, and copyrights.
This would also be the perfect time to seek out advertising law internships. Not only will those provide you with more knowledge and hands-on experience, but they may very well land you a full-time job once you pass the bar exam. Just be sure not to get over your head with all the obligations, so you can manage to fit everything in your schedule. Obviously, you should be learning a lot, but getting burned out early on in your career will cause more harm than anything else.
Licenses, Certifications, and Registrations
Finally, with an advertising law degree in hand, the only thing left to do is pass the bar exam in your state to become a licensed attorney. It’s worth taking some time off after school to prepare for this exam, even though it can be freely retaken if you fail. Even though they say time is money, preparing for the exam properly, even if it takes a little while, instead of rushing blindly, will end up saving you more time and better prepare you to start practicing advertising law instead of constantly retaking the test.
An Advertising Lawyer’s Salary
You’re out of law school, you’ve passed the bar, you know FTC regulations and advertising law like the back of your hand - it’s time to find a job in the legal department of an ad agency. But, how much can you expect to make? As is often the case, the answer is slightly complicated.
Just like bar exams aren’t created equal across the country, neither are advertising law salaries. On average, a lawyer practicing advertising law in the United States makes $117,600 a year. Not bad at all, considering this law practice requires less specialization compared to, say, criminal justice jobs. The median salary is a little bit under the national average for lawyers, which sits at $126,000. Even the highest-paying positions in advertising law don’t go much higher than that, so that might be a downside to consider.
Location-wise, the highest pay for marketing law jobs is in San Francisco, followed by Washington DC, Los Angeles, and Dallas. This doesn’t differ much from other legal positions or the national average. Salaries for lawyers in San Francisco sit at around $160,000. Bonuses are entirely dependant on your employer. Usually, ad lawyers are employed to overlook ad campaigns and hardly ever appear in a courtroom, so there aren’t many per-case bonuses to look for. It’s more common for an advertising law attorney to get a Christmas bonus.
Job Outlook
Lawyers seeking work within advertising law will rarely end up opening a private practice. Mostly, they’ll work within a big law firm or as in-house counsel for an ad agency, as advertisers prefer working with big-name firms if they have to hire externally.
That being said, the number of jobs in advertising law is rising. There are more ads for products and services, across more channels than ever before, and there’s plenty of work to be found, especially with marketing companies working on a global scale.
Job Prospects
As mentioned above, advertising is in its biggest expansion phase yet, so the job market is ripe. Finding advertising law counsel jobs shouldn’t be challenging, but the number of available opportunities will vary depending on where you’ve decided to practice. As with many law practices having to do with media, California might just be the best location to move to if you want to tackle this profession.
What’s also great is how open the advertising world is for both beginners and veterans. Lawyers fresh out of school won’t have trouble finding their footing and growing their careers in advertising law. Some experience will be a valuable asset, but after just two or three years of working as a lawyer, you’ll be able to find even more jobs, specifically high-profile ones where, naturally, your salary can become significantly higher.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q:
What does an advertising lawyer do?
A:
An advertising lawyer’s primary job is to provide legal consultation services to an advertising agency. They oversee various marketing projects for their clients, making sure they stay within ethical bounds, don’t clash with any FTC laws and regulations, and don’t infringe on copyright. Certain advertising law prospects can also entail working for the FTC and enforcing the regulations imposed on advertising.
Q:
Where do advertising laws come from?
A:
In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, is the regulatory body for advertising governing how companies can promote their products. For example, the FTC’s rules outline what type of ads are considered deceptive or simply false advertising.
Q:
How much does a career in advertising pay?
A:
Generally speaking, an advertising attorney’s salary is just south of $120,000; $117,600, to be precise. Of course, your exact salary will depend on where you end up practicing law, as some states pay their lawyers more than others.
Q:
What is the highest paying job in law?
A:
With a quarter-million annual salary, a corporate lawyer job is the highest paying legal job in the United States. These lawyers specialize in mergers and company acquisitions, which are extremely lucrative, and therefore result in this significant salary increase compared to other attorneys.
Q:
What law careers are in demand?
A:
Compared to advertising law jobs, family and consumer lawyers are more in demand right now. Experts on legal issues related to divorce, and alimony, in particular, are the most sought-after.