Sorting legal marketing compliance questions by who can answer them

What to take away

Four parties, four kinds of question

Most compliance confusion is a routing problem. A question lands on the wrong desk, gets a cautious answer, and comes back unchanged.

Bar counsel answers what the rule means in your state. Your firm answers what actually happened. The vendor answers what the contract permits. Google Business Profile and Yelp each answer what their own review policies allow.

Bar counsel: the rule questions

California, Florida and Texas each publish their own advertising rules, and each state bar has a committee or ethics hotline that reads them.

The California Rules of Professional Conduct, Rules 7.1 through 7.5, took effect on November 1, 2018. The State Bar's Office of Chief Trial Counsel enforces them.

The Florida Bar keeps a free ethics hotline for members, and its Standing Committee on Advertising answers advertising questions.

Texas Disciplinary Rule 7.07 requires public media ads to be filed with the State Bar of Texas Advertising Review Committee, which publishes its fee schedule online.

The ABA Model Rules 7.1 through 7.5 are the starting text, not the governing text. Rule 7.2 covers communications through media and value given for recommendations. Rule 7.3 defines solicitation.

Rule 7.2(b) allows payment for advertising costs and for a qualified or nonprofit lawyer referral service. It does not cover a per-lead fee to a commercial vendor.

Do not paraphrase those rules as instruction. Read the adopted version in your jurisdiction, then ask bar counsel about your specific facts. The legal marketing compliance overview maps the rule set; the adopted state text is what binds you.

Two questions belong here and nowhere else. Whether a claim is misleading under Rule 7.1, and whether a live contact is solicitation under Rule 7.3. Both turn on facts plus adopted language, and only the bar or a licensed ethics attorney can close them.

The ABA Ethics Helpline is free to ABA members and takes questions from lawyers in every state. If your bar is slow, an outside ethics attorney is the second route; the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers keeps a member directory.

The firm: the fact questions

Your firm owns every question about what was actually said, sent, paid or promised. That includes who picked the audience, what the vendor script says, which landing page the ad points to, and whether the client signed a release.

Keep a decision record for each answer. Name the decision owner, the population, the evidence period and the method. State what the result cannot establish. Save the definition and the date beside the answer.

A short template covers most firm decisions:

The GAO evaluation design guide connects evaluation questions to evidence needs and design choices.

If a FindLaw listing or a Google Business Profile post is the ad at issue, the firm's approval email is the evidence, not the vendor's dashboard.

The vendor: the contract and audit questions

Agency contracts, lead vendors and review platforms answer questions your firm cannot. Who owns the social login. Whether the vendor may reuse your content. What happens to the leads when the contract ends.

Ask for the audit trail before you ask your bar. Payment terms, selection logic, vendor scripts and downstream contact routing all live in the vendor's records, not yours. A dashboard that hides the audit trail is a contract problem, not a rule problem.

Avvo shut down its fixed-fee legal services marketplace in 2018, after several state bars questioned how its fees were structured. The platform terms and the bar rules moved at different speeds.

The W3C Privacy Principles statement warns against shifting privacy work onto individuals. The firm keeps the duty, so the firm keeps the records. Running legal marketing compliance as a cycle rather than a one-off review keeps that assignment intact.

Worked example: a paid directory listing

A firm buys a top placement from FindLaw, Martindale-Hubbell or Avvo. That leaves four questions with four owners.

Answer all four in writing with dates. Record the rejected options too, because the constraint that killed them may change.

Common questions

Is social media always advertising?

No single label resolves it. The answer depends on the content, the purpose, the audience, who controls the account and which state's rules apply. Payment matters too.

The party who answers is your state bar counsel, not the platform. The Florida Bar's Standing Committee on Advertising reads ads from Florida lawyers, and the State Bar of California weighs claims under Rule 7.1. California Rule 7.2 covers advertising, so a social post that markets legal services can fall under both rules.

Can a lawyer buy a directory listing?

Potentially. Review the provider's role, the payment, the recommendation language, the accuracy and the adopted rules in your state. Your bar counsel reads the arrangement; the vendor reads the contract.

California Rule 7.2(b) covers payment for advertising costs and payment to a lawyer referral service.

Avvo profiles are free to claim. FindLaw and Martindale-Hubbell sell paid placements, which raise the Rule 7.2(b) payment question that a free profile does not.

Does a prior business contact permit every solicitation?

Do not generalize. Apply the exact adopted rule to the relationship, method, motive and message, and route the question to bar counsel rather than to the person who wants to make the call.

ABA Model Rule 7.3(a) excepts family, close personal and prior professional relationships. Whether your contact fits one of those categories is the bar's call, not the sales team's. California Rule 7.3 is the solicitation rule in that state, and its adopted text controls this question.

Who answers a question about a client review?

The platform answers what its review policy allows, and the FTC Endorsement Guides govern the disclosure side. The Endorsement Guides sit at 16 CFR Part 255. Your firm answers whether the client consented and whether the result context is accurate. California Rule 7.1 governs whether a review or testimonial is misleading.

Google Business Profile and Yelp both prohibit paid or incentivized reviews. The FTC updated the Endorsement Guides in June 2023. Before the next campaign launches, settle the lawyer advertising questions that keep resurfacing.