What Rule 7.2(d) Requires

Identifying the Responsible Lawyer

What Rule 7.2(d) Requires

Every advertisement for legal services must say who stands behind it. Rule 7.2(d) of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct imposes that duty in a single sentence: "Any communication made under this Rule must include the name and contact information of at least one lawyer or law firm responsible for its content."¹

You can run the rule as a two-question check on any lawyer advertisement. Who is speaking? How can the audience reach that speaker? A communication that answers both questions for at least one responsible lawyer or law firm satisfies the duty. A communication that answers neither question, or only one, does not.

The rule makes more sense against the history it displaced. Before 1977, most states prohibited solicitation and advertising by lawyers outright. The organized bar condemned the practice as crass and commercial, beneath the dignity of the profession, and likely to undermine respect for lawyers and the judicial system. Because it held that a client should choose a lawyer for character and reputation, it also considered the promotion of legal services, like other consumer products, inherently deceptive to the public.² Rule 7.2(d) presupposes the opposite world, one in which lawyers advertise and every message must carry the name and contact information of a responsible lawyer or firm.

The duty attaches to "any communication made under this Rule." Rule 7.2 is the Model Rule on communications about a lawyer's services, and the word "any" leaves no room for a format exception: a printed notice, a web page, and a broadcast spot all carry the same duty.³ The sentence imposes this one requirement and no other, so Rule 7.2(d) is not the place to look for other disclosures. The two subsections below take the sentence apart: first what must appear, then whose name it must be.

Name and Contact Information

Rule 7.2(d) demands two things, joined by "and": the name and the contact information of at least one responsible lawyer or law firm.⁴ Both must appear. The name tells the audience who is speaking, and the contact information lets the audience act on that knowledge by calling, writing, or visiting. A name nobody can reach and a number nobody can attribute each fail at the job the rule assigns.

The demand is light because name and contact details are the least controversial content an advertisement can carry. In Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, the Court observed that criticism of lawyer advertising "does not apply with much force" to the basic factual content of an advertisement: the attorney's name, address, telephone number, and office hours. It added that the American Bar Association's own code would have allowed such information, and more, in the classified section of the telephone directory, though an advertising diet limited to such spartan fare would provide scant nourishment.⁵ A rule can require a lawyer to publish what the profession already accepts as unobjectionable without burdening the lawyer's own message.

The two ads show why neither element can stand in for the other. The radio spot gives the audience a way to call but nobody to hold responsible, and the newspaper ad gives the audience a lawyer but no way to reach that lawyer. A billboard that pairs the firm's name with its street address and telephone number meets both elements at a glance, and the identification duty asks for nothing more.

The Model Rule's text does not say which forms of contact information suffice or how many must appear.⁶ The ordinary meaning of the phrase supplies the test: the reader must be given a usable means of reaching the responsible lawyer or firm, whether a street address, a telephone number, or an email address.

States may word the duty differently. Florida's Rule 4-7.2(a) requires every advertisement and written communication to include the name of at least one lawyer or the lawyer referral service responsible for its content. It pairs that name with a location disclosure keyed to a "bona fide office," a physical location where the lawyer or law firm reasonably expects to furnish legal services in a substantial way on a regular and continuing basis. The advertisement must disclose, by city or town, one or more such offices of the lawyers who will actually perform the advertised services.⁷ Florida's demand is narrower than the Model Rule's in one respect and stricter in another. It asks the reader to be told where the working lawyers really practice, and an address listed only for show would not count, because the office must be a place where the lawyers reasonably expect to do substantial, regular legal work.

Satisfying Rule 7.2(d) also says nothing about whether the content is true. The duty is one of identification: the rule asks whether the communication names and offers a way to reach a responsible lawyer or firm, and it does not ask whether the message is accurate.

Responsible Lawyer or Firm

Rule 7.2(d) answers the question of whose name in the same sentence that creates the duty: the communication must carry the name and contact information of "at least one lawyer or law firm responsible for its content."⁹ Three limits sit inside that phrase. The quantity is "at least one." The identity is "lawyer or law firm." The connection is "responsible for its content." Each limit does separate work.

One named party is enough because the point of the name is to show who answers for the message. A single answerable party does that, and a roster of the firm's other lawyers adds length without adding an answer. The text also allows the firm to name itself, so an advertisement that identifies the law firm and no individual lawyer still meets the duty.

The second limit costs students the most points. A common wrong answer names whoever produced the piece. The rule asks for a lawyer or a law firm, and a marketing company that designed the piece is neither.¹⁰ Hiring a vendor does not make the vendor the identified party, and whether the lawyer paid the vendor does not change who the rule requires to be named.

The third limit should be read literally. A lawyer or firm that lets its name appear on a communication claims the message as its own, and it becomes the party who must answer for what the message says. The listed name therefore works as an assertion of ownership over the content and cannot serve as a courtesy credit. That is why the rule requires a party tied to the content itself and does not accept anyone who merely helped produce or place the message.

States may widen the list of acceptable named parties. Florida Rule 4-7.2(a)(1) requires every advertisement and written communication to include "the name of at least 1 lawyer or the lawyer referral service responsible for their content."¹¹ A lawyer referral service that advertises in Florida can therefore satisfy the naming requirement by naming itself. The Model Rule's text lists only a lawyer or law firm, so a referral service is not among its options.¹² A marketing company is a lawyer, a law firm, or a referral service under neither version, and it fails under both. On an exam, apply the Model Rule's text unless the question points to a particular state's rule.