Attorney Advertising Rules Checker

What the attorney advertising rules say, and what a checker can hold you to.

Three short Model Rules, adopted and renumbered state by state, govern everything a lawyer says about the lawyer's own services. Here is what each one does, the phrases that trip them, and the parts no phrase checker can read for you.

Model Rules, state rules

There is no federal regulator of lawyer advertising. Since Bates v. State Bar of Arizona in 1977, when the Supreme Court struck down blanket bans on it, advertising by lawyers has been allowed and false, deceptive or misleading advertising has been restrainable. What restrains it is each state's rules of professional conduct, adopted by the state's highest court and enforced by its bar. Most states start from the American Bar Association's Model Rules, but the Model Rules bind nobody on their own. Each state adopts its own version, numbers it its own way, and amends it on its own schedule.

That is the first thing to know about this checker. The pack it runs is a generic baseline modelled on Model Rules 7.1 to 7.3. Your state's rule may say more than the Model Rules do, and some states add requirements the pack does not encode at all: labels on certain communications, specific disclaimers, filing an ad with the bar before or after it runs. Read the result as a pre-check against the common ground, then read your own state's rule.

A note on numbering, because many law-marketing pages still get it wrong. The ABA amended the advertising rules in 2018 and deleted Rules 7.4 and 7.5. Specialist claims moved into Rule 7.2(c) and firm names into the Comment to 7.1. A page citing "Rules 7.1 to 7.5" as current is describing the model as it stood before then, although a particular state may still use the older numbers.

ABA Rule 7.1: misleading by what it leaves out

Rule 7.1 is two sentences. A lawyer may not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer's services, and a communication is misleading if it contains a material misrepresentation of fact or law, or omits a fact necessary to make the statement, considered as a whole, not materially misleading. (Paraphrased: americanbar.org refused our request when this page was built. The verbatim text of 7.1 to 7.3 is in our guide to state bar advertising rules.)

The second half is what catches websites. Every sentence on a page can be true and the page still fail, because of what is missing: a contingency-fee headline with nothing about costs, a settlement figure with nothing about how the case differed from the reader's. The rule reaches communications, not just advertisements, so a practice-area page, a bio and the "how we handle these cases" paragraph at the foot of a blog post are all inside it.

Two lines from the Comment to Rule 7.1 do most of the work in practice. A truthful report of results can mislead if it is presented so that a reasonable person expects the same result without regard to the facts of their own matter. And an unsubstantiated comparison with other lawyers can mislead if it is stated with enough specificity that a reader assumes it can be backed up. Those two ideas are the core of the pack: guarantees and "we will win" on one side, "best attorney" and "#1 law firm" on the other.

Results and testimonials

The Model Rules do not ban writing about cases you won. The Comment to 7.1 says the risk is presentation: results shown so the reader forms an unjustified expectation. It also says appropriate qualifying language may prevent that, which is what a prior-results notice is for. The pack carries one ("Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome"), and in the product it is chosen for posts marked as case results. This free checker never selects it; it always reads for the everyday legal disclaimer. If your page reports an outcome, check the notice yourself, and check whether your state asks for particular wording. Testimonials sit under the same rule, and several states add their own conditions.

Specialist and expert claims under Rule 7.2(c)

Rule 7.2(c) says a lawyer may not state or imply certification as a specialist in a field of law unless two things are true: a certifying organization approved by an appropriate state authority, or accredited by the ABA, has certified the lawyer, and the communication clearly names that organization. (Paraphrased, as above.) Note "or imply": a bio can reach this rule without using the word "specialist". Whether plain "expert" or "specializing in" wording is allowed varies by state.

This pack does not flag specialist or expert wording today. Telling a legitimate "board certified by" line from an improper one needs to know which bodies your state recognizes and whether you hold the credential, which a phrase pattern cannot. Read these claims yourself against your state's version of the rule.

The responsible lawyer, and solicitation under 7.3

Rule 7.2(d) asks that any communication under the rule include the name and contact information of at least one lawyer or law firm responsible for its content. On a website that is usually the byline and the firm's address, not the article body, so this checker does not look for it; check that your templates carry it.

Rule 7.3 is about solicitation, and it is narrower than most firms assume. It defines solicitation as a communication directed at a specific person the lawyer knows, or should know, needs legal services in a particular matter, and it prohibits live person-to-person solicitation for pecuniary gain, with exceptions. A page anyone can find is directed at nobody in particular, so publishing is not soliciting. A targeted letter or a message to someone who just posted about their accident is a different question, and not one the words of a page can answer.

Attorney advertising disclaimer: what the check reads for

The pack's everyday block is written for any law firm page: the content is general information and not legal advice, reading it or contacting the firm creates no attorney-client relationship, a signed written engagement agreement is what creates one, and the reader should speak to a lawyer licensed in their state. Firms reword these blocks, so the checker does not demand the exact text. It reads for the phrases that carry the weight:

If any is absent, the disclaimer is flagged with a count of how many. The Model Rules themselves do not require an "Attorney Advertising" label. Some states do, for some communications, and the pack's own notes name New York's label as one it does not yet encode. See law firm blog disclaimer requirements for both blocks and where they go on a page.

Filing your ads with the bar

Nothing in the Model Rules requires filing an advertisement. Some states do. Florida runs a filing and review program for many advertisements, Texas offers review before an ad runs and requires filing for some, and Virginia offers an informal prescreen. These are process duties, not wording, so no text check can see whether you have done them; the pack's notes list the Florida, Texas and Louisiana regimes as outside its scope. (Summarised from our research, not fetched from each bar for this page. Check your bar's current rule and fees.) Use a check like this one before a submission, not in place of it.

Common phrases, mapped to the rules

How natural phrasings land against the pack today. Each row was tested against the pack's own patterns when this page was built. The misses are listed because they are real: a pattern catches the words it was written for, and a paraphrase of the same claim can pass.

The contingent-fee row stays a warning on purpose. "No fee unless we win" is accurate when the firm also covers costs, and misleading when the client may still owe case expenses; the flag is set aside when a phrase like "costs and expenses" sits beside it. The Virginia State Bar is among those that have flagged "you pay nothing unless we win" where the client may still owe costs, which is exactly the phrasing the pack's warning is written for. (From our research, not fetched from the Virginia State Bar for this page.)

A real run on published copy

Below is a paragraph from Verand's own guide to state bar advertising rules and the everyday disclaimer block from its disclaimer guide, pasted as published on verand.ai and checked against the pack. It is explanation rather than a pitch, and it carries the full block, which is what a clean result looks like. The advisory row is citations: the pack expects a legal article to cite its sources, and a two-paragraph excerpt has none.

Where a checker helps, and where it cannot

Free help already exists. The Florida Bar publishes checklists with rule citations, and commercial drafting tools such as Ghosts sell state rule packs that flag superlatives, guarantees, past results and testimonials as you write. This checker is a different thing: paste any page, get each flag cited to the Model Rule behind it, no account. It is deterministic, so it never tires and reads the fourth paragraph as carefully as the first. It is also literal, and it judges words, never facts: it cannot tell whether "we recovered $2 million" is true, typical or fairly presented, or whether a page is a communication about your services at all. Treat a clean result as the absence of the listed problems, not a green light.

Common mistakes

• Treating a clean scan as sign-off. No tool, this one included, can tell you a page is allowed under your state's rule. It can tell you it did not find the patterns it knows.
• Assuming the Model Rules are your rules. Your state's adopted version is what binds you, and it may add labels, disclaimers or filing the baseline does not have.
• Qualifying a claim three screens away. Rule 7.1 reads the communication as a whole, and the checker only sets a match aside when the qualifier sits beside it. A cost note in the footer does not qualify a fee promise in the headline.
• Leaving the bio unchecked. "Specialist", "expert" and a list of verdicts sit in bios and representative-matters pages more than in posts. The checker does not read specialist claims; you have to.
• Pasting only the article body. The disclaimer often lives in a template. Paste the rendered page, or the disclaimer will read as missing.
• Letting the agency own it. The rules bind lawyers, not the agency or freelancer who wrote the post. The lawyer who lets it go up answers for it.