Judge Orders Magazine Run Ad for T-Shirt

SAN FRANCISCO — The State Bar’s magazine, filled with ads for computers and legal services, is under judicial orders to run an ad of a different kind--one for a T-shirt portraying a lawyer’s “brain,” with more space devoted to sex and gambling than law.

Superior Court Judge Lucy Kelly McCabe told the Bar on Tuesday to publish the advertisement in the August issue of California Lawyer, and said she may also extend the order to the following two months.

The lawyer’s brain diagrammed on the T-shirt is divided into small spaces for compassion and knowledge of the law, and larger areas for sex, football pools and coffee breaks.

Bar officials said they rejected the ad not because it spoofed lawyers but because it demeaned women. The ad shows a laughing woman wearing a tight-fitting T-shirt.

But McCabe said the Bar’s decision was arbitrary and its refusal violated freedom of expression.

Neil Shapiro, lawyer for Peter Kagel, who designed the shirt, said the Bar’s status as a state agency limited its right to reject advertising.

“If California Lawyer were private, it could tell Mr. Kagel, ‘Take your ad elsewhere,’ ” Shapiro said Wednesday. “But since the Bar is a state agency, it raises all kinds of free-speech issues.”