Texas lawyer advertising rules, SEO and ads

Texas is one of six states that make lawyers file their ads, and it adds a criminal waiting period. Most ads go to the State Bar within 10 days of first use, every ad names a responsible lawyer and where that lawyer practices, and contacting an accident victim before day 31 is a crime. None of this stops a firm from advertising well. It changes how ads are written, versioned and filed, and that is where most Texas compliance problems start.

Not legal advice. This page summarizes public rules for marketing planning. Your firm answers to the State Bar of Texas for its ads, and the rules change. Check with the Bar’s Advertising Review Committee and your own counsel before you run anything.

Texas 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: within 10 days of first use

Most Texas ads go to the State Bar of Texas Advertising Review Committee within 10 days after they first run, with a $100 fee for each filing. A non-exempt ad that was never filed draws a $250 fine on top of the $100 fee. A firm can also ask for pre-approval at least 30 days before an ad runs, and a finding of compliance binds in the lawyer’s favor (Rule 7.04).

Three kinds of material skip filing (Rule 7.05): website content other than the homepage, informational social posts that don’t offer services, and ads that give only the firm’s name and contact details.

Verification: P, primary source · Texas Disciplinary Rules, Part VII · State Bar Advertising Review

What every ad must say

• A responsible lawyer and a place. The name of a responsible lawyer and that lawyer’s primary practice location (Rule 7.02(a)).
• Expenses on fee claims. A contingent-fee ad says whether the client pays expenses (7.02(c)).
• Fees as advertised. A firm honors the fees it advertises (7.02(d)).
• Real amounts. If a verdict was reduced or reversed, the ad shows the amount actually received (7.01).
• The label on solicitations. Solicitation texts and social messages start with “ADVERTISEMENT” (Rule 7.03, comment 10).

Verification: P, primary source · Texas Disciplinary Rules, Part VII

The 31-day rule

Texas Penal Code §38.12 bars written, in-person or phone solicitation about a personal injury or accident before the 31st day. Breaking it is a Class A misdemeanor, and paying someone to solicit is a third-degree felony. Search ads, and replies to people who asked to be contacted, are not solicitation (Rule 7.03, comment 2).

Verification: P, primary source · Penal Code §38.12 · Rule 7.03

Results, testimonials and “Board Certified”

Claims are allowed if they aren’t misleading and don’t create unjustified expectations (Rule 7.01). “Board Certified” appears only with certification from the Texas Board of Legal Specialization or a body it accredits (7.02(b)). Saying a lawyer “practices”, “focuses” or “concentrates” in an area is fine when it’s objectively true.

Verification: P, primary source · Texas Disciplinary Rules, Part VII

Referral services, lead generators and vendor pay

Texas treats anyone who refers potential clients to lawyers as a lawyer referral service, which needs a certificate, and only a government body or a qualifying nonprofit can be certified (Occupations Code §952.002, §952.101, §952.102). A lawyer may pay a lead generator that doesn’t recommend the lawyer, if the payment fits Rule 5.04 (Rule 7.03, comment 13).

Two ethics opinions shape marketing contracts. Opinion 706 bars paying a nonlawyer vendor a share of the firm’s revenue. Opinion 661 allows bidding on a competitor’s name if the ad isn’t misleading.

Verification: P, primary source

Spanish and other languages

Required statements appear in each language the ad uses. Saying that a language is spoken (“Hablamos español”) doesn’t by itself trigger them (Rule 7.01(d)).

Verification: P, primary source · Texas Disciplinary Rules, Part VII

Call recording: one-party consent

A person on the call may record it.

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

Texting: SB 140

Since September 1, 2025, texts count as “telephone solicitation” under SB 140 (Business and Commerce Code chapter 302). That brings registration, a $10,000 security deposit and private suits. A November 2025 settlement reportedly exempts consent-based texting; confirm it before relying on it.

Verification: S, secondary sources · Morgan Lewis · Varnum

Privacy

The Texas Data Privacy and Security Act covers businesses above the SBA’s small-business size. Even a small business needs consent to sell sensitive data, and sensitive data includes health diagnoses and immigration status.

Verification: P, primary source · §541.002 · §541.107

Drug and device lawsuit ads

A TV ad for a drug or device lawsuit opens with “This is a paid advertisement for legal services.”, names the sponsor and the responsible firm, warns viewers not to stop a medication, and avoids medical-alert, agency-logo and false-recall framing (Government Code §§81.151 to 81.156). The law covers TV only.

Verification: P, primary source · SB 1189 (2019)

Rules last checked October 24, 2026.

What this means for your SEO and ads in Texas

Search ads

• Put the lawyer and the city where Google always shows them. Google says text that must appear in every ad has to be pinned to headline 1, headline 2 or description 1, and that the second description isn’t guaranteed to show (Google). A headline holds 30 characters, so a short name plus “Houston” can fit there; a longer name belongs in the first description, which holds 90.
• Every version is a filing question. A responsive search ad can carry up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions that Google mixes. Whether each version or combination is a separate $100 filing is still a question for counsel. Until it’s answered, keep a small, approved headline set, pin the required elements, and file each new version by day 10. We alert on days 1, 5 and 8.
• “No fee unless we win” always travels with the expense statement. Write one approved version of the sentence in English and one in Spanish, and reuse them.
• Pre-approve the ads you’ll run all year. For evergreen, high-spend ads in English and Spanish, filing 30 days ahead for pre-approval buys a finding that binds in the lawyer’s favor.
• Competitor keywords are allowed under Opinion 661, as long as the ad makes clear whose firm it is.

Your website and SEO pages

• The homepage is the page that files. Interior pages are exempt from filing, so practice pages, city pages and FAQs can improve every week. Batch homepage changes and file them as you would an ad.
• Watch the words in title tags. Titles and meta descriptions show in search results, so treat them like ad copy. Use “Board Certified” only with certification, and prefer “focuses on” to “specialist” or “expert”.
• Results pages show what the client received. If a verdict was reduced or reversed, the page shows the amount actually paid.
• City pages follow the market. The eight largest metro areas below hold most of the state’s population. Plan a page for each, written for that city’s courts, roads and languages, rather than one statewide page.

Spanish

About 28% of Texans age 5 and older speak Spanish at home, and about 39% of them speak English less than “very well” (Census, below). Google stopped offering campaign language targeting in September 2026 and now serves ads whose language matches the search (Google), so Spanish searches reach only firms that run Spanish ads.

• Write Spanish ads and pages natively, with the required statements in Spanish.
• Staff the phones for it: a Spanish ad that reaches an English-only voicemail wastes the click.
• For immigration practices, never use “notario” or “notario público” wording, which Texas restricts (Government Code §406.017).

Calls, texts and intake

• Recording. Texas is one-party, but tracked lines should still open with a recording notice, because callers can be in all-party states.
• Texts. Under SB 140, any texting needs consent captured on the form, quiet hours (we use 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the caller’s time zone) and at most 3 attempts in 24 hours. We don’t text or call consumers ourselves; we set up the firm’s tools to these limits.
• The 31-day rule. No targeted outreach to accident victims, and no radius targeting around hospitals, clinics, crash scenes or police stations. Search, Local Services Ads and Maps answer people who are already looking, so they sit outside the rule.

Tracking and privacy

Injury details are sensitive data. Keep tracking tags off pages that collect them, ask only what intake needs, and send ad platforms only a click ID, a neutral stage name and a value band, never case facts.

A bill to watch

SB 30, which would have capped personal-injury medical damages, died in June 2025 (Texas Tribune). It can return when the 90th Legislature sits from January 12 to May 31, 2027 (session dates), and damages limits would change what an injury case is worth. Dallas and Houston were both among the ten largest local legal advertising markets by spend in ATRA’s 2024 report.

Languages in Texas

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 Texas

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. Texas has 26 metro areas in all.

The Texas 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

Texas’s rules are mostly verified against primary sources, so the open questions are about formats and filings:

• Is each responsive search ad version, or each headline combination, a separate $100 filing, and do assets limited to name and contact details avoid filing under Rule 7.05?
• Does the November 2025 SB 140 settlement exempt the firm’s consent-based texting from registration and the $10,000 security?
• Can Performance Max and other formats that assemble ads automatically meet Rule 7.02(a) when they can drop the lawyer’s name or location?
• Which evergreen ads are worth submitting for pre-approval 30 days ahead?

How Probative works in Texas

Texas is one of our three launch states, so its full rules are loaded into our ad checks from day one.

• Your attorney approves every version. Nothing runs without the responsible attorney’s written approval of the exact ad.
• We prepare the filing; your attorney files. For each version we prepare the ad in its final form, the application and the media list. Your attorney signs, files and pays the Bar’s fee, and we track the 10-day clock.
• One number. Every Monday you see what each signed case cost, counted from your own records under The Probative Standard.

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.