State bar advertising rules for a law firm blog
Read this to find out which of your bar’s advertising rules a blog post can actually break, and what each asks of a page before it goes up. It runs in the rules’ own order, from whether they reach you to what is left when the page comes down.
- June 27, 1977Advertising stops being bannedIn Bates v. State Bar of Arizona the Supreme Court struck down a blanket ban on lawyer advertising and named the limit it left standing: advertising “that is false, deceptive, or misleading of course is subject to restraint”.
- 1984 to 2009The states adopt, one at a timeThe ABA’s list opens with New Jersey in July 1984 and closes with Maine in February 2009. California is not on it, and Puerto Rico is recorded as not having adopted at all.
- SinceFive rules became threeThe ABA’s table of contents lists Rule 7.4 and 7.5 as Deleted. Specialist claims moved into 7.2(c), firm names into the Comment to 7.1, and advertising now sits in three rules.
Does it reach you?
Four situations cover nearly every firm here, and the second is the one people are actually asking about.
Three rules, three different jobs
They print as one block on your bar’s website, which is why they get read as one rule. They are not. 7.1 is a standard: it governs everything you say about yourself or your services, and holds it to one thing. 7.2 is a short list of permissions and requirements: which media you may use, what you may pay for, what a specialist claim needs, whose name appears. 7.3 is about who you contacted, and barely touches what you published.
Nearly everything a firm publishes lives under 7.1, and most arguments about a draft are arguments about its second sentence. 7.2 catches a handful of things a blog does routinely. 7.3 rarely reaches a published page at all, and the fear of it costs firms work they could be doing.
The three rules, in their own words
Shorter than their reputation, and 7.2(a) settles the first question firms ask in one line: a lawyer may communicate information about the lawyer’s services “through any media”. No medium is off limits. Left, the rest of the text. Right, what it means when the communication is a page on your site.
Four words that carry the weight
The three rules reuse one handful of terms, and an argument about a draft is nearly always an argument about one of them. Material is the fourth: would a reasonable reader decide differently if they knew?
Communication
Not “advertisement”. 7.1 reaches anything you say about yourself or your services, and the Comment says so: the Rule governs all communications about a lawyer’s services, advertising included.
Imply
In 7.2(c) and again in 8.4(e), both times as “state or imply”. A page can imply what no sentence on it says: a badge, an adjacent seal, a photograph of a courthouse, the order the paragraphs run in.
Unjustified expectation
From the Comment to 7.1. The test is not whether your result was real, but whether presenting it that way leads a reasonable person to expect the same, without reference to the facts and law of their own matter.
The claim you cannot back up
Most firms read the rules as a ban on saying anything specific about their practice and strip the numbers out. A real cost, paid for a requirement that is not there.
Keep figures about your own practice off your website.
Nothing in the three rules says it. Read this way, a firm strips out the detail that distinguishes it from every other firm in the county and publishes the interchangeable page.
If you state it with the specificity of a fact, be able to show that it is one.
The Comment’s test is the impression left: a claim put so precisely that a reasonable reader concludes it must be backed. The figure is fine. What is not is one nobody at the firm could reproduce in a year, which is a records problem rather than a legal one.
Solicitation, and the line that is not where you think
Firms hold content back because they have read 7.3 and taken it for a rule about marketing. It is a rule about who you approached, and it prohibits less than anyone assumes. Drag the audience and watch what engages.
- Rule 7.1, on every word of it 7.1 Applies
- It is a solicitation as 7.3(a) defines one 7.3(a) Not met
- The prohibition on live person-to-person contact 7.3(b) Not met
A page open to the world is directed to nobody in particular, so the second part of the definition fails and 7.3 never starts. 7.1 is reading every word, and 7.2(d) wants a responsible lawyer named.
Publishing is not soliciting, and the confusion costs firms real work. An open page fails one part of the definition outright: it is not directed to a specific person. A firm keeping its blog thin out of respect for 7.3 has applied a rule about who it telephoned to a question about what it wrote. Two things sit outside all of it anyway: 7.3(d) exempts communications authorized by law or ordered by a court, and 7.3(e) permits taking part in a prepaid or group legal service plan run by an organization you neither own nor direct.
No clock in the model, which is not the same as no records
Read Model Rule 7.2 straight through and there is no retention period in it. Four paragraphs: media, what you may pay for, specialist claims, whose name goes on it. The absence reads like permission and is not one.
The page is gone and what it said is now a question of evidence. A site edited in place holds none: the version live two years ago was overwritten by the one live now, and nothing recorded the difference.
7.1 is not a test the page passed on the day it published. It is a standing statement about your services, judged as it reads today. A damages cap that was right when you wrote it is a misleading communication now, and nobody touched the page.
Which is the argument for records nobody ordered you to keep. What to write down on the day sits on the AI page in this section rather than here. What to keep, and who signs it off →
What Verand checks of these rules, and what it does not
Everything above holds whether or not you buy anything. This is how much of it a check on a draft can actually see. The right-hand column is longer, which is why we print it.
What it checks
- Blocks a promised outcome, and blocks “best attorney”, “#1 law firm” and the rest of that family unless the line attributes the ranking to a named source. Both are Rule 7.1. That tier has no override.
- Blocks any line implying pull with a court. Connections at the courthouse, knowing the judge, friends in the prosecutor’s office. Rule 8.4(e).
- Blocks six more from the baseline underneath: guaranteed results, guaranteed returns, cannot-lose, get-rich-quick, risk-free and zero-risk. The last two release only on a written, logged reason.
- Flags contingent-fee framing that says nothing about costs, because a client may still owe case expenses. A warning: it shows on the report and stops nothing.
- Requires the legal disclaimer block, three cited sources with one from the primary tier, and article schema, on every draft.
What it does not
- It does not check your state’s rule. The pack is the generic baseline built on the Model Rules. State overlays are written down and not shipped, so anything your bar bans that the model does not is yours to add as your own banned claim, where it gates like a pack rule.
- It does not decide whether a page is a communication about your services. That turns on facts outside the text, so every draft is checked as though it were. Where that line sits →
- It does not read Rule 7.3 at all. Solicitation is a question about who you contacted and how, none of which is visible in the words of a post.
- It does not check two things in 7.2. Whether a certifying organization is one your state approved needs a name the software does not hold, and the responsible-lawyer line at 7.2(d) is a check on a site’s structure, not a draft. Neither is built, and neither is guessed at.
- It does not publish. Nothing reaches your site without a lawyer at your firm approving it, and no setting changes that.
Validated against the ABA Model Rules. AI-researched and operator-reviewed. Your counsel confirms applicability. Not legal advice. How we label review →
The ones a partner asks first
About the rules, not our software. Each points at the paragraph it comes from.
Does 7.1 apply to a post that never mentions my firm?
To the parts of it that do. An explanation of how a statute works is not a statement about your services. The byline is, and so is the paragraph at the end about how your firm handles these matters. Both sit on almost every post, which is why the rule follows sentences rather than pages.
Can I write about a case I won?
Yes. The Comment says a truthful report of what you achieved may be misleading if presented so as to create an unjustified expectation, and in the next breath that appropriate qualifying language may preclude that finding. The constraint is on presentation, not subject. It does mean a results post carries the prior-results notice.
Can I pay for a directory listing or a sponsored write-up?
Paying the reasonable costs of advertising is permitted at (b)(1), and the Comment names online directory listings, domain registrations, sponsorship fees and website designers among the things you may pay for. Paying a person to recommend you is the prohibited thing, and the Comment draws that line at whether the communication endorses or vouches for your abilities. A listing by practice area is not a recommendation; a paid write-up calling you excellent is another animal.
My bio says I specialise in employment law. Is that a problem?
It depends on whether the line reads as a certification claim, and the rule reaches implication as well as statement. Where you are certified, name the certifying organization: 7.2(c) asks for it to be clearly identified, and a page omitting it fails even though the certification is real. Where you are not, the version that survives says what you do rather than what you are.
Where every line came from
Primary sources only. Quoted phrases are the Model Rules’ own words or their official Comment. Everything else is our rendering, worth checking against the text.
Rule references are to the ABA Model Rules unless another rule is named. The Model Rules bind nobody by themselves; your state’s adopted version does. Last checked against these sources on September 17, 2026. Not legal advice.
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/disclaimer-requirements QuestionCan lawyers use AI to write blog posts?
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/compliance-standardsThree rules take ten minutes to read. Holding four hundred pages to them does not.
Verand drafts in your firm’s voice, with your own facts in it, and runs the checks above before a reviewer opens it. A lawyer at your firm presses publish.
Packs are AI-researched and operator-reviewed against the published rules. Not attorney-verified. Not legal advice.