Is a law firm blog attorney advertising?
Almost certainly, and the label is not the useful part. Rule 7.1 reaches any communication about you or your services, so the question worth answering is which rules attach, not what to call the page. Answer four questions about the thing you just wrote and this page tells you which, and which one decided.
How long you have to file, and what stops the clock
The rule has no advertising trigger. It has a subject and a standard.
There is no exemption for blogs, no exemption for education and no audience size to clear. The rule runs to two sentences and turns on two things: what the communication is about, and whether it could mislead.
Is it about you, your firm or your services?
That is the whole of its reach. Not the format, not the audience, not the heading above it. The first line of the comment is blunt: the rule governs all communications about a lawyer's services, including advertising. Advertising is an example in that sentence, not the boundary of it.
ABA Model Rule 7.1, Comment [1] · notes 1, 2Could it mislead, including by what you left out?
A communication is false or 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. Truthful is not the finish line. A sentence every word of which is true still fails if what you left out beside it is doing the work.
The comment adds a second route: a true statement misleads if a reasonable person would draw a specific conclusion about you or your services from it for which there is no reasonable factual foundation.
ABA Model Rule 7.1 · Comment [2] · notes 1, 2Four questions about the page
Answer for the thing in front of you, or load one of the six a firm's site carries. Two land on it depends, because that is where the judgement genuinely lives and a clean answer there would be a false one.
Is it about you, your firm or your services?
Your byline, your firm's name in the header and a consultation button in the sidebar usually add up to yes, even when every paragraph is about the law. It reaches communications you make, so one you neither wrote nor supplied is a real question.
Does it claim, compare or imply anything a reader could rely on?
Experience, success, being better than the firm down the road, being a specialist in something. Also what a true sentence implies once you take away what you left out.
Does it report a result you obtained, or a client's experience of you?
A verdict, a settlement, a dismissal, a review, a quoted sentence from someone you acted for. This is the one that brings a notice onto the page.
Did you send it to a particular person you knew needed a lawyer for this matter?
Publishing on your own site is not that: the comment names a website and a billboard as communications directed to the general public. A message aimed at one person who has just had an accident is a different rule, and the one states diverge on most.
Yes. Covered.
A reading aid, not a ruling. It cannot see your page, and it works from the model text rather than the version your state adopted. Nothing here is legal advice.
Three things the rule does not do
Each of these has a firm somewhere publishing on the strength of it. All three come straight out of the text.
There is no defined term to argue over and no audience threshold to clear. The rule reaches a communication about the lawyer or the lawyer's services, and the comment opens by saying it governs all of them.
Rule 7.1 · Comment [1]Nothing in the text mentions teaching, and a truthful statement is misleading if it omits a fact necessary to make the communication considered as a whole not materially misleading. The explainer format makes omission easier, not safer.
Rule 7.1 · Comment [2]Solicitation is a separate rule about who you contacted. Its comment names a billboard, an internet banner, a website and a television commercial as communications directed to the general public, and adds that a response to a request for information is not one either.
Rule 7.3 · Comment [1]The ABA does not regulate you. Your state does, and its version is not always this one.
Everything above is model text, and the ABA disciplines nobody. Each jurisdiction's highest court adopts its own rules, and the adopted version is the one you answer to. Most track the model closely; some change words that decide outcomes. Here is the definition of solicitation in the model, and as one state adopted it.
Solicitation or solicit denotes a communication initiated by or on behalf of a lawyer or law firm that is directed to a specific person the lawyer knows or reasonably should know needs legal services in a particular matter and that offers to provide, or reasonably can be understood as offering to provide, legal services for that matter.
Solicitation or solicit denotes a communication initiated by the lawyer that is directed to a specific person and that offers to provide, or can reasonably be understood as offering to provide, legal services.The highlighted clause is simply absent. So is the tie to a particular matter at the end of it.
Quote the model number to your bar and you may be quoting nothing. A rule can sit in a state's code under a number the model never uses, so searching the model text does not reliably find the rule that binds you.
Without that clause, a communication that is not solicitation under the model can be solicitation where that lawyer practises. This page cannot resolve that for you.
Read your own rule. When the answer matters, your bar's ethics line is a faster route to it than anything on the internet, this page included.
ABA Model Rule 7.3(a) · 27 N.C. Admin. Code 02 Rule 7.03(a) · notes 5, 6Six things that are now true of that page
Being covered is not a problem. It is a short list of conditions, most of them things a careful writer does anyway. The last two get missed because they are mechanical rather than editorial.
- 01It has to be true, and true is not enoughIt fails on a material misrepresentation of fact or law, and equally on omitting a fact necessary to make the statement, considered as a whole, not materially misleading. The omission is the half people skip past.
- 02A claim needs a foundation under itA truthful statement misleads if a reasonable person would form a specific conclusion about you or your services for which there is no reasonable factual foundation. Read each sentence and ask what you would show the bar.
- 03A comparison has to be substantiatedAn unsubstantiated claim about your services or fees, or a comparison with another firm's, may mislead where it is put with such specificity that a reasonable person concludes it can be backed up. Best, top and leading are where it bites.
- 04Past results bring an expectation with themA truthful report of what you achieved can mislead if presented so as to lead a reasonable person to expect the same result in a similar matter without reference to the facts and law of their own case. An appropriate disclaimer or qualifying language may head that finding off.
- 05Specialist is a regulated wordYou may not state or imply that a lawyer is certified as a specialist unless an organization approved by the state authority, or accredited by the ABA, certified them and the communication names that organization. Naming it is part of the rule, not a courtesy.
- 06The page has to say who is responsible for itAny communication made under the advertising rule must include the name and contact information of at least one lawyer or law firm responsible for its content. A website address, a telephone number, an email address or a physical office all count.
Items 1 to 4 are Rule 7.1 and its comment. Item 5 is Rule 7.2(c). Item 6 is Rule 7.2(d) and Comment [12] to it. Sources below.
Working out that a page is covered takes a minute. Keeping every page you publish inside the list is the work.
Nobody fails this rule on the obvious sentence. They fail on the third paragraph of the ninth post, written at the end of a Thursday, where a superlative went in because it read better, or a result got described and the facts that produced it did not.
That list is what Verand checks. Name the bar you are admitted to during setup and the state-bar pack loads itself. From then on every draft is read against it before it can leave, and a lawyer at your firm presses publish. It cannot publish for you.
What it does not do is decide scope. Whether a page is attorney advertising is your call, and your bar's. What Verand does is read the claims inside the draft, on every draft, and refuse to hand over one that breaks a hard rule.
“Bring us the file before the deadline runs and we guarantee the outcome you are looking for.”
Validated against ABA Model Rules and FTC rules; AI-researched and operator-reviewed. Your counsel confirms applicability. Not legal advice. State-by-state overlays are documented and not yet shipped.
One rule reaches everything you publish. The other reaches almost none of it.
Worth keeping apart, because the one lawyers worry about is usually not the one that applies to a website.
- Any communication about the lawyer or the lawyer's services
- Advertising, and everything that is not advertising
- Firm names, letterhead and professional designations, which the comment counts as communications too
- A communication directed to the general public: a billboard, an internet banner, a website, a television commercial
- One made in response to a request for information
- One automatically generated in response to electronic searches
That is the solicitation rule only. Rule 7.1 still reaches every word of the website it has just let through.
Two rulebooks, and they can differ on exactly the points this page turns on. Which governs a given page is a question for the bars involved, not one to settle from a website.
The pack is a generic baseline built on the model text. Per-state overlays are documented and not yet shipped, so anything your state adds you enter in Brand Hub as your own banned claim and it gates the same way. Verand also never decides whether a page is attorney advertising. That judgement is the one thing here it will not make.
Everything above, traced back
Phrases in italics and in quotation marks are the rules' own words, read off the ABA's published text. Everything else is plain-English restatement, which is not the same thing as the rule.
Three pages that pick up where this one stops
Your bar decides what you may say. Checking every draft against it is ours.
Seven days, every feature unlocked, one click to cancel. Name your bar during setup and the first draft is written against that rulebook.
Validated against ABA Model Rules and FTC rules; AI-researched and operator-reviewed. A lawyer at your firm still presses publish.