The latest attempt by state court officials to regulate attorney advertising has satisfied most concerns that the rules violate the free speech of attorneys.

“It’s a big step forward,” a noted First Amendment attorney, Floyd Abrams, told The New York Sun after the court officials released the revised rules yesterday.

Attorneys have been waiting to see what the rules would include since June, when an earlier draft of the regulations came under criticism. Several members of the local plaintiffs bar, and legal observers across the country, said back then that the proposed rules probably violated the First Amendment rights of attorneys. Mr. Abrams said he planned to sue the state court system unless it revised the rules.

Significantly, yesterday’s revision also clarified that lawyers’ commentary, such as in articles and Internet postings, don’t need to be filed with the state court system and labeled with an “attorney advertisement” disclaimer, as some had feared.

The Federal Trade Commission’s pro-consumer office joined members of New York’s bar in criticizing the original proposals, warning the court that its proposed rules could have translated into higher costs for clients.

“I have to say, I’m very pleased,” the director of the FTC’s Office of Policy Planning, Maureen Ohlhausen, said in an interview yesterday.

The earlier proposed bans on testimonials, dramatizations, and the use of actors in commercials would have fundamentally altered lawyer advertising.

The revised rules, set to take effect February 1, will permit these marketing tools if the ads include a disclaimer.

Yesterday Mr. Abrams praised the rule revisions and said the court addressed most of his clients’ objections.

Still, he called a few of the court’s rules — such as the prohibitions on nicknames, mottos, and “the portrayal of lawyers exhibiting characteristics clearly unrelated to legal competence” — “excessively paternalistic.”

The court may have been targeting the likes of upstate personal injury law firm of Alexander & Catalano. In the firm’s TV ads and on their Web site, lawyers call themselves the “the Heavy Hitters!” — a type of moniker the court system’s new rule bans.

“I am not interested in what other lawyers think about my ads,” said Peter Catalano, who stars with his law partner in a flamboyant TV ad as super-sized humans, stomping through the streets of Syracuse soliciting potential clients to “think big.”

Beginning February 1, the Empire State’s new rules mean Mr. Catalano’s firm will have to think a bit smaller. Yesterday he defended his firm’s slogan and soon-to-bebanned ads as effective and entertaining. He said he is likely to ask Mr. Abrams to challenge yesterday’s revised regulations on freespeech grounds.

“I can’t call myself the Heavy Hitter? Please,” Mr. Catalano said. “I’m going to be the artist formerly known as the Heavy Hitter.”