No matter how big or small, no law firm is going to survive without at least some type of marketing in place. But what are the ethics of law firm marking? What are you allowed and prohibited from doing when you’re selling your lawyer services?

You can’t make false or misleading claims.

This means that you can’t make claims that simply aren’t true or that aren’t proven to be true. For example, you can’t say “Every client with this type of case wins therefore you will win” but you can say “In California 90% of Chapter 7 bankruptcy cases were discharged successfully” if in fact you have the statistical data to back up the statement. Before making any statistical claims in your law firm marketing material be sure to check and double check the facts.

You cannot cold-call potential clients unless they are lawyers.

While it may be tempting to start cold-calling a hot list of potential clients, it’s not good idea unless they are fellow attorneys. But even if you’re cold-calling other lawyers move cautiously. Cold-calling may be viewed as overly aggressive or annoying by some potential clients. If someone asks you to “take them off your list,” be sure to do so immediately. Stay organized so that you don’t inadvertently call people who have made it clear they don’t want to be contacted. And on that note, you want to avoid spamming anyone’s email.

Use disclaimers when creating an expectation.

If you’re creating an expectation that you can resolve a potential client’s legal problems, you must include a disclaimer stating that positive results are not guaranteed. For example, if you have marketing materials that cite a case where you won a client a $1 million dollar settlement, you need to include a disclaimer that says something along the lines of “results by vary from case to case” or “similar results not guaranteed.”

You can’t make comparative statements.

When marketing your law firm, you want to avoid comparative statements such as “We’re the best Family Law practice in Texas,” or “We have the smartest bankruptcy attorneys in Chicagoland. “ Since these types of statements can’t be proven, they fall under “false and misleading statements” because they can’t be verified with facts. However, you can say something along the lines of “Our attorneys won 5 awards in 2015” or “Our attorneys have attended Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.” These are statements of facts that can be verified but still imply that there are smart and experienced attorneys on your staff.

You can highlight your responsiveness.

Law firms are allowed to make statements about their ability to respond to clients. For example, you can say, “We respond to all client inquiries within 24 hours.” Just make sure that any claim you make is actually true. For example, you wouldn’t want to make any statement guaranteeing that a case will be resolved within a certain period of time since there are many factors that impact the time it takes to resolve a case.

When you’re creating marketing materials for your law firm, make sure you’re text isn’t violating any ethics rules.

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Lynn Luong is the Digital Marketing Manager for Smokeball, a case management software that increases productivity and efficiency for solo attorneys  and small law firms to become more profitable.  Lynn has over 8 years of experience in marketing with a focus on digital by developing successful strategies and managing many areas of marketing.