Pennsylvania lawyer advertising rules, SEO and ads

Pennsylvania rewrote its lawyer-advertising rules in October 2024, and one change reaches straight into intake: live person-to-person contact now “includes text messages”. There’s no ad filing, but every ad names the city where the lawyers doing the work practice, specialist claims follow a three-way test, and recording a call takes everyone’s consent. The Philadelphia metro also spans four states, so one campaign there can answer to four sets of rules.

Not legal advice. We summarize Pennsylvania’s published rules for marketing planning; your firm answers to the Disciplinary Board for its ads, and the rules change. Confirm anything here with your counsel first.

Pennsylvania rules in plain English

Each rule shows its verification code: P for a primary source we read, S for a secondary summary, D for the ABA-model default (what the codes mean).

Filing: none

Pennsylvania doesn’t require ads to be filed or pre-approved.

Verification: P, primary source · Rule 7.2

What every ad must say

• Name and contact details (7.2(k)).
• The city or town of the office where the lawyers doing the work principally practice (7.2(h)).
• Extra expenses in any fee ad (7.2(g)).
• Paid endorsements disclosed (7.2(e)), and no nonlawyer portraying a lawyer (7.2(f)).
• Other lawyers paying for the ad disclosed (7.2(i)).

Verification: P, primary source · Rule 7.2

Contact with prospective clients: texts count

We found no waiting period. Since the October 2024 rewrite, the comment to Rule 7.3 says live person-to-person contact “includes text messages”. Targeted direct mail is allowed, with no label or filing. Whether the texting comment reaches replies to people who asked to be contacted is a question for counsel.

Verification: P, primary source · Rule 7.3

Results and “specialist”

Results can mislead (Rule 7.1, comment 3). A lawyer can claim to be a specialist in one of three ways: certification by a Pennsylvania-approved certifier, another state’s certification with a disclosure, or an objectively verifiable claim with a disclaimer that the lawyer isn’t certified (7.2(c)).

Verification: P, primary source · Rule 7.1 · Rule 7.2

Lead generators and referral services

Lead generators are allowed if they don’t recommend the lawyer (Rule 7.2, comment 4). The old referral-service rule, Rule 7.7, was deleted on October 15, 2024.

Verification: P, primary source · Rule 7.2 · Rule 7.7

Ads in other languages

We found nothing in Pennsylvania’s rules about non-English ads. A Spanish ad aimed at Allentown or Reading still gets its required statements in Spanish, by our default.

Verification: D, default · Rule 7.2, reviewed

Call recording: all-party consent

Everyone on the call must consent (18 Pa.C.S. §5704).

Verification: S, secondary source · Recording laws by state, 2026

Texting law

Beyond the bar rule above, we found no Pennsylvania texting law with private suits in the 2026 trackers; the federal TCPA governs automated texts and calls.

Verification: D, default · Mini-TCPA tracker · 47 CFR 64.1200

Privacy

Pennsylvania has no comprehensive consumer privacy law in force.

Verification: S, secondary source · State privacy comparison

Rules last checked October 24, 2026.

What this means for your SEO and ads in Pennsylvania

Intake comes first

The texting change matters more to most firms than any ad rule. Many intake systems answer a form fill with an automatic text. In Pennsylvania, check that habit with counsel before it runs.

• Until your counsel answers the question, reply to new inquiries by phone or email, or text only people who chose texting on the form.
• Keep consent wording on the form, name the firm in it, and log it.
• Callbacks still follow our limits: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the caller’s time zone, at most 3 attempts in 24 hours.

Search ads

• The office city is required, not optional. Name the city of the office where the lawyers doing the work practice, not just a market you’d like to reach. For a Pittsburgh firm buying Philadelphia searches, the ad still says Pittsburgh.
• Pin the firm name and city to headline 1 or description 1, the positions Google says usually appear in full (Google).
• Fee claims carry the expense line. “No fee unless we win” without the extra-expenses statement doesn’t meet Rule 7.2(g).

Your website and SEO pages

• City pages must be honest about offices. A page for a city where the firm has no office can describe service there, but it shouldn’t suggest an office that doesn’t exist.
• “Specialist” needs one of the three routes. Without certification, use “focuses on” or “practices”, or add the non-certification disclaimer to a verifiable claim.
• Results pages need context, because the comment to Rule 7.1 warns that results can mislead.

The Philadelphia problem

The Philadelphia metro covers parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. An ad aimed at the whole metro reaches all four. New Jersey wants a New Jersey-licensed attorney responsible for firm-name ads and its own disclaimer on comparisons (New Jersey); Delaware is treated as all-party for recording (Delaware); and Maryland has all-party recording and a texting law with private suits (Maryland). Split the metro into state-level campaigns with presence targeting, and check each against its own state’s rules.

Spanish and other languages

Spanish is concentrated: about 13% in the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton metro and about 10% around Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, against under 2% around Pittsburgh (Census, below). Spend Spanish budgets where the speakers are.

Languages in Pennsylvania

Sources: Spanish and any-language shares from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2024 1-year estimates, table C16001; other languages from the 2020-2024 estimates, table B16001. People age 5 and older.

Top metro areas in Pennsylvania

Sources: population from the ACS 2024 1-year estimates, table B01003; Spanish at home from the ACS 2020-2024 estimates, table C16001, people age 5 and older. Pennsylvania has 16 metro areas in all. Populations cover each whole metro area, including parts in other states.

The Pennsylvania legal market

Source: Census Bureau, Statistics of US Businesses 2022, offices of lawyers (NAICS 541110). A firm with offices in several states is counted in each.

Questions for your counsel

• Does the 2024 comment that live contact includes texts reach replies to people who asked to be contacted?
• When lawyers in several offices handle a case, which office city goes in the ad?
• Does the all-party recording statute reach the firm’s call tracking as the secondary source says?

How Probative works in Pennsylvania

• Your attorney approves every ad, with the office city and any expense statement pinned in place.
• Intake set up for the texting rule. We configure your form, call tracking and follow-up tools to the approach your counsel chooses, and we never text or call consumers ourselves.
• Per-state campaigns in Philadelphia. We split the metro by state and check each part against its own rules.

Probative works with law firms in every state from day one, remotely and in person; travel terms are on the pricing page. Your attorney approves every ad before it runs, and where a state requires a filing, we prepare it and your attorney files it. Every Monday you see what each signed case cost, counted from your own records under The Probative Standard. The lawyer advertising rules by state table compares every state.