ABA Law Practice Today — Beyond the RPC: Staying Compliant with your Law Firm’s Marketing Efforts

It was once again my privilege to serve as editor for the Ethics edition (December 2025) of the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Today webzine. I’ve had the honor of shepherding the Ethics-themed issue for many years—drawing on my work with ABA Law Practice’s Ethics & Professionalism Committee and my long-standing role on the webzine’s editorial board.

A sincere thank‑you to this month’s outstanding contributors. The issue brings together a thoughtful mix of perspectives on the ethical challenges lawyers face today:

• Beyond the RPC: Staying Compliant with Your Law Firm’s Marketing Efforts — my article exploring how ethics rules intersect with modern marketing practices.
• Practical Guidance for Ethically Changing Law Firms — Jennifer Ellis tackles the often‑thorny realities of transitioning between firms while staying squarely within ethical boundaries.
• Click with Caution: Legal Ethics, Email Errors, and Generative AI in Practice — Dan Siegel offers a timely reminder that technology can be both a powerful tool and a source of risk.
• Cybersecurity for Attorneys: Back to the Basics — David Ries returns to fundamentals that every lawyer should revisit in an era of escalating cyber threats.
• What Attorneys Should Consider When Thinking About Third‑Party Litigation Funding — Tad Duree of Bailey Glasser provides a clear-eyed look at the ethical considerations surrounding this increasingly common practice.

I’m grateful to each author for contributing their expertise to an edition that reflects both the complexity and the urgency of legal ethics today.

I wrote Beyond the RPC: Staying Compliant with Your Law Firm’s Marketing Efforts shortly after delivering a similarly themed continuing legal education program on the subject. If you’d prefer to watch my CLE—originally broadcast on November 18, 2025—You Can’t Do That! Ethics Issues and Concerns in Law Marketing and Solicitation is available on the Justia website.

If you are blocked from reading the article behind the ABA paywall, it is provided below in its entirety. Please contact me directly to request a PDF version of the article.

ABA Law Practice Today – Beyond the RPC: Staying Compliant with Your Law Firm’s Marketing Efforts

Summary 

• Many law firms ignore marketing ethics, risking violations across ads and online platforms.
• Compliance goes beyond RPC basics, looking at UPL, MSJ, and solicitation issues.
• Look at recent news headlines showing firms scrutinized for press releases, digital ads, and deceptive intake tactics.

It is obvious in looking at lawyer advertising that there are law firms that care about ethics and compliance, and those that either are not concerned with it or are somehow oblivious to the fact that it is something that exists.

As half of my life revolves around reviewing legal marketing campaigns, I find myself constantly paying attention to what law firms are or are not doing. I take a hard look at every billboard I see to determine whether it follows the rules of the state in which it sits. Spoiler alert: many do not. I take a second look at the television commercials that run or listen to the language used on radio advertisements. And don’t even get me started on the constant scroll of attorney ads fed to me on Facebook, Instagram, and within my web browsers. They often are a mix of firms engaging in the unauthorized practice of law, failing to comply with the related states ethics rules, or not having received proper approvals from those state bars still requiring such. It creates great frustration because my clients want to avoid missteps, yet they often compete with law firms that simply don’t care. It is quite the conundrum.

Not Your Grandparents’ RPC

And if you think that this stuff is only for plaintiff’s firms, for class actions or personal injury, think again. I still wince when I’m on a Big Law website that fails to comply with the same set of rules and regulations—with improper disclaimers, use of certain language that is forbidden, or improper use of lawyer ratings and rankings, often as it relates to referencing the methodologies involved. Before a defense firm questions a plaintiff’s firm on possible ethics missteps in the acquisition of a client, whether related to initial solicitation, intake, or the advertising itself, be sure you are not throwing stones from a glass house.

This is where many law firms don’t really understand that the scope of legal marketing, advertising, business development, and solicitation ethics goes well beyond taking a quick look at the Rules of Professional Conduct (RPC) for your home state. Yes, knowing 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 (and 5.5) makes for a good baseline. Read the specifics of the relevant states for your practice, the comments sections, and advisory ethics opinions, but that only gets you so far. Most of the issues that will potentially come back to bite you will reside in issues tied to unauthorized practice of law (UPL), the related topic of multistate jurisdictional practices, solicitation, and fee-sharing.

Blend in the new world of acronyms that play a role here—MSOs (Management Services Organizations), ABSs (Alternative Business Structures), along with litigation funders, private equity investors, marketing teams, and lead generation tied to fee-sharing and incorporating newer “tools”—such as an influencer retained to chat you up on TikTok. The world of Yellow Pages ads and Martindale-Hubbell print directory listings is a thing of the past. Think more along the lines of how you can or might (or might not) participate or comment on social media, in LISTSERVs, or on Reddit pages.

Torn from the Headlines

The perusal of recent headlines on Law360 highlights considerations that have flummoxed a few law firms.  A law firm that ended up in hot water because of the way press releases were being used to generate business (again, press releases are something that many firms don’t think about when perusing the RPC). An attorney who quit a committee on client solicitation in his state because of what I’ll call indifference. A major personal injury firm is saying a rival in their space stole the “secret sauce.” Texas is modernizing its barratry ban to incorporate texting and related types of digital marketing. The inability of some states to regulate (punish, or sanction) attorneys licensed elsewhere. A marketer is asking a judge to reconsider a text solicitation ban in Pennsylvania. Recordings from an intake call center engaging in deception. And, finally, litigation funders are being questioned about the ways they helped generate “leads” of hurricane victims in Louisiana for law firms. This is just a smattering of topics from a few weeks of articles—reminding you that we are going well beyond looking at a 7.1 or a 7.2.

Taking Issue with Your Marketing

If you are sitting around hoping your postal carrier does not bring with them a friendly letter from your local state bar’s disciplinary arm, understand that it is just one of the delivery mechanisms for letting you know there may be compliance issues in your law firm’s marketing. While the underlying goal of the RPC is probably (or should be) to protect the consumer, that is rarely the source of a complaint. The greater likelihood is going to be a competing lawyer in your market or, in rare cases, an aggressive, proactive state bar. In many cases, issues are raised by in-house counsel or defense counsel, in discovery, to the judge, or in a reply brief that questions various aspects of a law firm’s fitness in representing a plaintiff. These issues might be specific to advertising restrictions, approach to solicitation, UPL, or a myriad of other possible arguments.

There are also external entities that can stir up trouble for you outside the “legal” space, specifically, including consumer watchdogs, the Better Business Bureau, or perhaps Google taking issue with ways you might be using search engine optimization (SEO), duplicative content, or abuse of the “review” system.

In some cases, politicians get involved, which is usually not a great thing. Governors, state legislators, and lobbyists may play a role in the way aspects of lawyer advertising are addressed. And there are intellectual property issues in play, as it might relate to copying a competitor’s website, content, or social media. We referenced potentially stealing the “secret sauce,” or misuse of a defendant company’s logos, slogans, and taglines. For purposes of not going off the rails, we’ll leave out the artificial intelligence (AI) issues for another day.

States Are All Over the Map

A definite consideration when attempting to comply with marketing ethics rules is looking at the subjective and inconsistencies in interpretation (and enforcement) of the RPC from state to state. We’ll leave out specific references to those states for public consumption, but let’s just say that states take numerous different approaches to something that might discuss “lowest fees in the state,” or whether YouTube falls under TV or advertising, whether I can compensate a client for giving me a review, and how I might use “accolades” in the way I present myself.

There are battle royales (as they might call it in the WWE) in states between competing firms dealing with SEO keyword advertising, use of online reviews, or, even worse, improperly responding to an online review.

Of course, you should continue to put “Attorney Advertising” on your marketing materials, have the proper disclaimers, avoid often improper terms such as specialization or expertise, and follow your state’s specific requirements under the RPC. But those are what I call Marketing Ethics 101—not much has changed there in nearly 50 years since Bates v. Arizona. It is understanding that the globalization of the law practice, the move of most marketing to a digital platform, and the increasingly competitive nature of the law “business” means that paying attention to marketing ethics compliance may be more important than ever. Regardless of whether you get your hand slapped, fined, sanctioned, or suspended, none of us wants to hear that we misstepped by not paying attention to the issues outside of a quick glance at the RPC.