See where your firm stands

Data · Ethics opinions

Ethics opinions on lawyer marketing, in one index

What state bar associations, courts and the ABA have written about lead generators, paying for leads, online reviews, trade names, websites, social media, chatbots and more. One plain sentence per opinion, with the official link and whether it still applies.

Checked October 25, 2026 · CC BY 4.0 · Not legal advice

What is in this dataset?

An index of US state and ABA ethics opinions, committee guidelines and court rulings on lawyer advertising and marketing, from 2015 to 2026 plus earlier landmarks: lead generators, pay-per-lead, reviews, testimonials, trade names, websites, social media, chatbots and AI tools, competitor keywords and more. Each record gives the issuing body, number, date, topics, a one-sentence holding in our words, a practical step, whether it is still in force, the official link, an exact short quote and the date read. It is not the opinions' full text.

Use it before you try a new kind of marketing. If you want to buy leads, pay a referral platform, quote a client review, run a chatbot or bid on a rival firm's name, search the index for that topic and your state first. You will see which committees have already answered the question, what they said in plain words, what step it points to, and whether the answer still stands. Then read the opinion itself through its official link before you rely on it. Typical questions it answers: can a firm pay a lead generator per lead or per signed case; may an ad quote a client's online review; may a firm buy a competitor's name as a search keyword; who is responsible when a chatbot on the firm's site answers a legal question; and whether a trade name or a website domain can imply a specialty. Each answer names the committee or court, the opinion number and its date, so a partner can hand the citation straight to counsel.

Records
251
Look up by
40
state
Primary source
249
Secondary source
2

The letters are explained in what P, S, D and U mean.

What does a record look like?

The full records add the dates, the quoted source text and every field in the CSV and JSON files below.

How to cite this dataset

You can reuse, adapt and republish this data, including commercially, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0). The only condition is that you credit Probative and link to the source.

Version
1.0.0, released October 26, 2026
Every version
10.5281/zenodo.23656748 (always points to the newest)
License
CC BY 4.0

Download the data

Free, no email or login. The files are hosted on this site and Zenodo, a public research archive.

Suggested citation

Probative. (2026). Legal-marketing ethics opinions, 2015–2026 (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23656749

Credit line for a chart, table or article

Source: Probative, Legal-marketing ethics opinions, 2015–2026, version 1.0.0, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23656749, licensed CC BY 4.0.

Not legal advice. This is a plain-English summary of public ethics opinions, kept for marketing planning, and opinions and rules change. Check with your state bar and your own counsel before you run an ad.

How do I use it in my own tools?

Ask an AI assistant: add https://probativegrowth.com/mcp/opinions as an MCP connector (no sign-in), or the main server https://probativegrowth.com/mcp for every dataset. Setup for each app is on the API and MCP page.

opinions_lookup
The marketing ethics opinions indexed for one state, DC or the ABA: issuing body, number, date, topics, a one-sentence holding, whether it is still in force, the official link and a short quote.
opinions_compare
The indexed marketing ethics opinions of up to 10 jurisdictions side by side.
opinions_search
Marketing ethics opinions whose holding or title matches the words given, such as "lead generator", "Google reviews", "trade name" or "chatbot".

Or read the static files, with no key and no usage cap:

What are the limits?

  • The holding is our one-sentence summary, not the opinion’s text. Read the opinion itself before you rely on it.
  • Ethics opinions are advisory in most states. A later rule change can overtake an opinion even when the bar has not withdrawn it; the record’s note says so when we found one.
  • Not every state publishes its opinions online, so some states have few or no records.
  • Records older than 90 days since their last check are marked stale in the files until we re-check them, and we say on this page when we fix a confirmed error.

Other open datasets: Ad-platform policies for law firms: tracker data, Spanish-speaking clients per Spanish-speaking lawyer (data), California court filings by county, by case type (data). The full list is in the data catalog.

Running a firm? You don’t need the raw data: we handle your state’s ad rules for you. See where your firm stands first.

Where do I start?

See where your firm stands.

Tick what your firm already has: 7 questions, about 2 minutes. You’ll see your stage, what we’d change first, and one place to start, with its price.

See where your firm stands

Or get a free review: Probative Growth records a 90-second video of what clients see when they look you up, and emails it within 2 business days.

Step 2 of 2. Where should we send the video for your site?

We use this to send your video. No newsletter, and no sales calls unless you ask.

We use what you send to reply. To learn which of our ads work, we tell Google, Microsoft and Meta that a request came in, with the ad you clicked (if any) and a scrambled copy of your email and phone, never your message. Never sold, never added to lists. Global Privacy Control or an email to us turns this off. By sending this form you agree to our privacy policy.

See every price