Case results on a law firm site, and the disclaimer that has to go with them

Case results are what a prospective client is looking for on a law firm website, and they are the thing bar regulators scrutinise hardest. Every state bar we have built against treats a website as advertising, including the biography pages, the results, the testimonials and in many states the social profiles that link to them.

Two examples, and why they are only examples

New York requires an advertisement referring to past results to state that prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome, and the guidance treats prominence as part of the requirement, which rules out eight point type at the bottom of a footer. Florida's rule 4-7.13 produces the disclaimer most people recognise, about the hiring of a lawyer being an important decision that should not be based solely upon advertisements.

Those are illustrations rather than a checklist, and copying either one is the most common mistake we see: it is another state's rule. Your own jurisdiction's rules of professional conduct govern, and a firm admitted in several states inherits the strictest version of every rule it touches.

This is the part a web team can actually get right. A disclaimer written into page copy is copied inconsistently and forgotten on the next page somebody adds. A disclaimer that is a component, placed per page and per results block, is applied once and audited in one place, and a rule change or a second state admission is one edit rather than a crawl through the site.

The same applies to testimonials, which several states treat separately from case results and require their own disclaimer alongside. A testimonial component carrying its own notice is the difference between a rule applied everywhere and a rule applied where somebody remembered. The vertical version, including where the winnable traffic is when paid search is unaffordable, is on our personal injury page.