Read this first. We are a marketing agency. We are not a law firm, we employ no attorneys, and nothing here is legal or ethics advice. This guide does not state any state rule, cites no rule numbers, and is deliberately general. Your firm should confirm current advertising requirements with its own bar, because those requirements vary by state and change over time.
With that said, here is what an agency working in this practice area needs to understand, and what most do not. Every item below is a category of risk rather than a rule, and the point of naming them is to explain why the workflow looks the way it does.
01Communications must not be false or misleading
This is the foundation that most other requirements sit on, and in practice it is a content standard as much as an ethics one. Every claim in a firm marketing needs to be substantiable.
For a marketing writer that translates into a concrete discipline. Superlatives need support. Comparative claims about other firms are difficult to substantiate and generally not worth the exposure. Statistics about the firm need a source the firm can produce. Anything phrased as a promise about what will happen in a matter is a problem, because outcomes depend on facts nobody controls.
The practical version we work to: if a partner could not defend the sentence in writing with evidence, it does not go in the copy.
02Client testimonials are treated differently by state
Testimonials are restricted or prohibited in some states, and where they are permitted they commonly require a disclaimer. This is the single most common place an agency creates exposure for a firm without realizing it.
An agency that offers to get you reviews, or that publishes client quotations as a matter of course, has not considered your position. The correct sequence is to establish what your state permits first, then decide what to collect and how to present it, then build the process. Reversing that order is how firms end up with a website full of material they may need to remove.
You will notice this site links to three published testimonials rather than quoting them, and states plainly that none of them is from a law firm. That is the same discipline applied to ourselves.
03Past results usually travel with a disclaimer
Past results typically require a disclaimer noting that outcomes depend on the facts of each case. Where results are referenced at all, that language needs to travel with them, which in practice means the disclaimer belongs on the page rather than in a site wide footer nobody reads.
The subtler issue is that a result presented without context implies a pattern. A single favorable outcome described prominently reads to a prospective client as what this firm achieves, which is exactly the inference the disclaimer exists to prevent. Careful presentation does more work than the disclaimer does.
04Specialist and expert are regulated terms
Terms such as specialist and expert are regulated in many states and may require certification. This catches firms out constantly, because those are the natural words for describing a genuinely focused practice.
We do not put those terms into a firm copy on our own initiative. Where a firm holds a certification that permits the claim, tell us and we will use it accurately. Otherwise there are plenty of ways to communicate depth without the regulated vocabulary: what the firm handles, how often, and what that means for a client is more persuasive than the label anyway.
05Some states require retention or filing
Some states require advertising copy to be retained for a period, and a few require it to be filed in advance of use. An agency that publishes on a firm behalf without knowing whether this applies has created a record keeping problem the firm did not know it had.
This is one of the reasons our workflow delivers everything to the firm rather than publishing directly by default. If your state requires retention, you have the copy. If it requires advance filing, you have it before it is used rather than after.
06What a workable workflow looks like
- The firm tells the agency what constraints apply in its state. The agency does not guess.
- Everything is drafted with general statements hedged and specifics referred to a consultation.
- The full piece is delivered to the firm before anything is scheduled or queued.
- The firm reviews and marks it up. Revisions continue until the firm approves.
- Only then does it publish. Nothing goes live on a timer.
- The firm keeps a copy, because the firm is the party with any retention obligation.
Six steps, and the only one most agencies include is the first draft. The value is not in the sophistication of the process, it is in the fact that the firm is never asked to accept copy it has not read.
07The short version
- Rules vary by state and change. Confirm current requirements with your bar.
- If a claim cannot be substantiated in writing, do not publish it.
- Testimonials and past results are the two highest risk categories. Handle both deliberately.
- Specialist and expert are regulated in many states. Do not let an agency use them casually.
- Never let anyone publish under your name without your review. That is the whole guide in one line.
Again, and deliberately: this is not legal or ethics advice, no state rule is stated here, and your firm is responsible for compliance with its own bar requirements.
08Questions worth asking any agency
- Who at your agency knows that lawyer advertising is regulated by state?
- What is your process when a firm tells you a specific term cannot be used?
- Do you publish on a client behalf, and if so, what stops something going live unreviewed?
- How do you handle a client asking you to collect testimonials?
- If my state requires advertising copy to be retained, how do I get a copy of everything?
- What happens to published content if I leave?
The answers matter less than whether the questions land. An agency that has never considered any of this will say so within a sentence or two, usually by reassuring you that it handles compliance, which is precisely the answer that should worry you. No agency can carry your obligations, and one that claims to has misunderstood where they sit.
The workable posture is the opposite. The agency knows the categories of risk exist, asks your firm what applies, writes to it, and puts you between the draft and the publish button every time. That is not a sophisticated position. It is just the honest one.
09A note on the awkward cases
Three situations come up repeatedly and none has a clean answer, which is precisely why they are worth naming rather than glossing over.
A client volunteers a glowing review. Nobody solicited it, which removes one concern and not the others. Whether it can be republished on your site, and what has to travel with it, still depends on your state. The safe sequence is to establish that before deciding, not after it has been on the homepage for a month.
A negative review misstates the facts. The instinct to correct the record is strong and is the most dangerous instinct in this area, because a response that engages with the facts may confirm a client relationship and discuss a matter. This is a partner decision, not an administrator one, and not an agency one.
A page is accurate for your state and read in another. Search does not respect jurisdiction. A page written for one state gets read by people in fifty, which is an argument for saying plainly which state it is written for rather than writing something so general it helps nobody.
None of the above is advice about what your firm should do. It is a description of the questions we ask before writing, so that whatever your firm decides, the copy is built to it.