Two Disclosures in Rule 7.2: Who Is Responsible, Who Certified

Rule 7.2 requires two disclosures inside a communication, and each answers a different question for the reader. The first applies to every communication made under the Rule, which “must include the name and contact information of at least one lawyer or law firm responsible for its content.”¹ That duty tells the audience who stands behind the message and how to reach that party. The second applies only when a communication claims specialization, and it tells the audience who certified the lawyer. A student who folds the two into one duty will pass an advertisement that satisfies one and ignores the other.

The specialist provision opens with a prohibition: a lawyer shall not state or imply that a lawyer is certified as a specialist in a particular field of law, unless two conditions are met.² Both must hold, because the first condition ends with “and.”

The lawyer has been certified as a specialist by an organization that an appropriate authority of a state, the District of Columbia, or a U.S. territory has approved, or that the American Bar Association has accredited.³
The communication clearly identifies the name of the certifying organization.⁴

The two conditions work on different problems. The first limits which certificates count: only those issued by an organization a state authority has approved or the ABA has accredited. The second puts the certifier's name in front of the reader, who can then judge what the word “specialist” rests on. The identification duty serves a third purpose, accountability for the message, so meeting one disclosure never meets another.

Exam Analysis Steps

Each disclosure has its own trigger and its own test, so the surest way to review an advertisement is to ask the questions separately and record each answer before moving on.

Ask whether the communication names, with contact information, at least one lawyer or law firm responsible for its content. This question applies to every communication made under the Rule.
Read the communication for any statement or suggestion that a lawyer is a certified specialist. The certification disclosure arises only when the communication makes that claim.
If it does, ask whether the certifier is an organization approved by an appropriate state authority or accredited by the American Bar Association.
If the certifier qualifies, ask whether the communication itself clearly names that organization.
Score the identification result and the certification result independently, so that a pass on one never excuses a failure on the other.

Exam questions on this topic pair contact details with a specialist claim to see whether you check each disclosure on its own terms. The tempting wrong answer comes from an advertisement that looks complete.

The instinct that misleads here is to treat full contact details as general compliance. Those details say who is responsible for the message and nothing about who certified the lawyer. The missing organization name is a separate violation sitting beside a perfectly good identification.

A different advertisement fails in the opposite direction.

Together the two flyers show that a clean result on one disclosure leaves the other open. An advertisement passes only when it clears every check that applies to it.

Two refinements keep the check accurate. An advertisement that neither states nor implies specialist certification triggers none of the specialist conditions, so for that advertisement the identification duty is the only question. And because both conditions must hold, naming the certifier cannot rescue a lawyer whose certifier no state authority has approved and the ABA has not accredited. Printing a private association's name in large type satisfies the second condition and still violates the first.

Two Disclosures in Rule 7.2: Who Is Responsible, Who Certified

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