Current Legal Landscape (UK):
The UK has a dual system for regulating advertising and marketing. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) handles self-regulation, overseeing ads and social media content. Statutory consumer protection is evolving under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act, effective April 2025. This law gives the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) the power to impose fines of up to 10% of global turnover and increases scrutiny of misleading practices and non-compliance.

Top 3 Legal Tips for Clients:
Take Consumer Law Seriously:
• It’s now a C-suite priority due to increased risks and potential penalties.
Avoid Over-Correction:
• Don’t rush into over-compliance. Laws and guidance are still evolving. Seek balanced legal advice.
Seek Advice Early:
• It’s cheaper and safer to involve legal counsel during the ideation phase rather than post-launch.

Threats & Opportunities (Next 12 Months)
AI in Advertising
• AI brings efficiency and cost savings in content creation and localization.
• Risks include IP infringement, misleading outputs, and unverified claims.
• Vigilance is essential: AI isn’t foolproof yet.
CMA Enforcement
• New CMA powers include heavy fines, mandatory information requests, and even dawn raids.
• Legal and compliance teams must proactively adjust risk assessments.

Ensuring Client Satisfaction:
• A solutions-focused approach is key to client satisfaction, aiming to find legal ways to support clients’ goals rather than blocking them. By combining risk awareness with creativity, lawyers can help clients achieve their objectives while staying within legal boundaries.

Technological Advancements:
• AI is reshaping legal practice: Law firms use it internally to boost efficiency, especially for routine tasks, helping reduce costs for clients. However, it’s not yet fully reliable for complex legal work.
• Lewis Silkin is embracing AI innovation: The firm is actively exploring how AI can support clients directly and enhance services through internal innovation.

What is the current legal landscape for Advertising & Marketing law in your jurisdiction?
In the UK we’re going through a period of change when it comes to advertising, marketing and consumer law. Generally, there’s a two-track system. There’s a self-regulatory system for advertising and marketing where the ASA, the Advertising Standards Authority, regulates advertisements as well as social media output and various other types of content brands. At the same time, we have consumer law and that’s where the real changes are. We’ve got a new DMCC Act, Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act, which came into force in April 2025 that has introduced the threat of significant fines, breaching of the advertising rules and other consumer laws as well. So that’s something to look out for. The finds are significant that up to 10% of annual global turnover and it empowers the CMA, the Competition Market Authority to take action against misleading practises.

What are three essential pieces of advice for clients related to Advertising & Marketing law?
The three pieces of advice I would give to clients in the advertising, marketing and consumer law space would be to recognise first of all, that things are changing in 2025.

So consumer law has sometimes been on the back burner for many, many businesses, even though they’re very, very important. So the forefront of any B2C company. But now it’s AC suite issue. With the threat of significant fines from the CMA, it has become AC suite issue. So take it seriously is the first bit of advice I will give to my clients.

The second is not to over hyper correct because it’s easy to try and get to do sort of the best practise approach straight away. The rules are evolving and the guidance is evolving. So it’s better not to hyper correct from the outset. There is guidance available and take legal advice so that you don’t become uncompetitive versus you’re competitive.

The third piece of advice is to always take advice early on in the process. It’s always easier to take advice earlier when the ideas are being formed than after you’ve spent millions of pounds on your campaign or on your claim or on your website or packaging. Whatever else it might be. Early intervention is always, always better. Get that guidance from the outset.

What are the greatest threats and opportunities in Advertising & Marketing law in the next 12 months?
One of the threats and opportunities, I think is in the form of AI. And I’m not going to go into huge detail because AI seems to be the buzzword of the day, but there are interesting developments when it comes to advertising and marketing in particular, and the use of AI both in generating ideas and in executing them.

So in the past, whereas companies might have to spend a lot of money investing in creating content that was slightly different for different markets or for different consumers, that is happening more on a sort of automatic basis using AI.

Now, the threat there, because you can save a lot of money by doing it. The threat is always that AI dreams things up or infringes third party copyright or causes other sorts of issues. So I think the threat is to let AI do its thing without really checking and thinking that it’s the answer to all of your problems.

It’s not. It’s not there yet, certainly. So I think getting it checked and keeping an eye on AI is always going to be necessary, but at the moment it’s an exciting development and lots of opportunity there for businesses and AD agencies to take advantage of.

One of the other great threats in advertising, marketing and consumer law is this threat of investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority. It’s technically been a possibility for the last few years, but now the CMA is empowered with significant new powers not only to bring large financial penalties in cases of breaches of consumer law, but also they have strong penalties for failure to comply with any of their requests for information. They’re not really requests their demands for information very often and they have strong powers to investigate, even to do dawn raids when it comes to potential breaches of consumer law. So it is a new landscape that we’re dealing with and something that businesses would be well advised to factor into their risk assessment.

How do you ensure high client satisfaction levels are maintained by your practice?
I think the key to client satisfaction is to find a way to say yes to clients when they want to achieve something. It’s not a matter of lawyers standing in the way and saying no. I think it’s about getting on board with what the client really wants to do, what they want to achieve as an outcome, and really trying to get there as close as possible, if not exceed their expectations. And find clever, interesting, novel ways sometimes to get to get to saying yes and get to achieving what they want to achieve.

Obviously, at the same time as keeping clients out of difficulties and sometimes flagging the difficulties and helping with risk assessments would always, the next step beyond that is to provide creative solutions to help them achieve their goals.

What technological advancements are reshaping Advertising & Marketing law, and how can clients leverage them?
One of the technological developments that we’re seeing in the legal profession is the use of AI by law firms. Increasingly it is helping lawyers to do their job more efficiently. I wouldn’t say more accurately at the moment, but more efficiently. Certainly it helps to progress part of the way and so it can help in terms of cost savings for clients.

We’re not seeing it necessarily helping when it comes to high value complex legal work, but certainly when it comes to run the mill day-to-day contracts and other pieces of work that have been commoditized over the years. AI is certainly providing some interesting answers and developments to help manage costs. And that’s certainly an area that we at Lewis looking very much interested in and helping clients to develop both on their own and on their behalf.