Advertising for law firms that clients notice.

Lawyer advertising is regulated by each state’s rules of professional conduct. Most states build on the ABA Model Rules. Model Rule 7.1 says a lawyer may not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer’s services, and its comments warn that even truthful past results can mislead if they create unjustified expectations. That is why a careful agency writes about the work and the process, not about outcomes.

States add their own requirements. Colorado’s version of Rule 7.2 says any communication under the rule must include the name and contact information of at least one lawyer or law firm responsible for its content. In Texas, the State Bar’s Advertising Review Department reviews ads, and failing to file a non-exempt ad is itself a violation of the Texas rules. In Florida, ads are filed and reviewed under Rule 4-7.19, and any change of any kind makes an ad a new one with a new filing fee.

In practice this changes how the work is done. Copy goes to the firm for approval before it runs. Claims about the firm are ones the firm can stand behind. Review requests follow Google’s policy and the FTC’s rule on consumer reviews: ask every client the same way, offer nothing for a review, and never pick only the happy ones. And where a state asks for filing, the agency builds that time into the plan.

Lawyers may pay for advertising. Colorado’s Rule 7.2, which follows the 2018 ABA model, says a lawyer may pay the reasonable costs of advertisements and may pay vendors who provide marketing services, such as website designers. What a lawyer must not do is pay a lead generator that states, implies or creates a reasonable impression that it is recommending the lawyer.

That line matters when you pick a marketing partner. An agency that builds your site, writes your pages and runs your ads is selling a service. A lead seller that tells the public it has picked the right lawyer for them is something else, and fee-sharing rules may also come into it. This site refers law firms to a marketing agency. It refers no clients to lawyers, recommends no firm to the public and shares no fees. More on that line is in the guide to lawyer leads.

What the firm should own

Whoever does the work, the firm should own its domain, its website, its Google Business Profiles, its ad accounts and its analytics from the first day, with the agency added as a user. Then the firm keeps everything it paid for if it ever changes agencies, and it can see what is being done in its name.

Google is plain about rankings. It says it does not accept payment to crawl a site more often or rank it higher, and that no one can promise a top ranking on Google. Its advice to anyone hiring help: if they promise first place in search results, find someone else. For local results, Google says they are based mainly on relevance, distance and popularity, and that there is no way to pay for a better local ranking.

Paid search works on different terms. In Google Ads, Ad Rank decides whether an ad shows and where, using several factors that include the competition, the context of the search and the ad’s quality at that moment. You pay for clicks, the actual cost of a click is often less than the most you bid, and you can change your daily budget at any time. Local Services Ads charge per lead instead, and lawyers go through state bar license checks for each lawyer in the firm before the Google Verified badge shows.

There are about 165,000 offices of lawyers with paid employees in the United States, according to the Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns for 2023. Many of them are competing for the same searches in the same cities. A firm that is specific about its practice areas, honest in its claims and quick to answer an inquiry gives Google, and the people searching, a clear reason to pick it.