Social Media for Lawyers: What the Bar Rules Let You Post

State bar rules, most of them built on the ABA Model Rules, decide what a lawyer can post for free, on top of whatever the platform itself allows. The same rules that cover a paid ad apply to an unpaid post, a comment reply and a direct message, with one difference: a written message is not the live, person-to-person contact that Rule 7.3 bans.

Quick answer

• Assume any post, comment or reply about your services falls under your state's advertising and solicitation rules until you have read them; the ABA Model Rules are a template, not the law in any state.
• Without the client's informed consent, never post enough about a case, even in general terms, for a reader to work out whose case it is; a public court record does not remove the duty of confidentiality.
• A comment, a text or a direct message is not "live" contact under Rule 7.3, but coercion, duress, harassment or soliciting someone who has said no is barred on any platform.
• A client's praise you share falls under Rule 7.1 like any other claim, and some states, Florida among them, set extra conditions for testimonials; check yours before posting one.
• Reply to criticism without revealing anything about a client's matter; ABA Formal Opinion 496 names an invitation to talk privately as one option.
• Put a tagged link in every profile and add a "how did you hear" option for social media in intake, so a quarter of posting can be judged by consults and signed matters, not likes.

Does posting for free actually bring in clients?

Unpaid posting works on recognition rather than direct response. A person a past client or another professional refers may look at the lawyer's profile before calling, so a stale or empty one can cost that call even when the referral itself was solid. Posting keeps the firm's name in front of referral sources and past clients between the moments they need a lawyer or know someone who does. None of that promises that a single post signs a case; paid reach on these platforms is a separate question, covered in Facebook ads for lawyers, and this page is only about what goes up for free.

What can't you say about a case you handled?

ABA Formal Opinion 480, issued March 6, 2018, holds that a lawyer who blogs or posts public commentary may not reveal information relating to a representation, public record or not, absent the client's informed consent, a disclosure impliedly authorized to carry out the work, or another exception in the Model Rules (ABA, checked 2026-10-05). That duty runs with the information regardless of its source, so a filed complaint or a published verdict does not make the facts free to post. The opinion also warns against disguising a post as a hypothetical when a reader could reasonably work out whose case it describes. A general explanation of how a type of case works, with no fact pattern from an actual file, stays on the safe side of that line; a recognizable sequence of events from a real matter does not, named client or not.

Is a DM or a comment reply a solicitation?

Under Rule 7.3, solicitation means a lawyer, or someone acting for one, starting a communication with a specific person whom the lawyer knows, or reasonably should know, to need legal help with a particular matter. It bars that kind of outreach only through live, person-to-person contact when a significant motive is the lawyer's financial gain, with exceptions such as other lawyers and people with a close personal or prior professional relationship. Comment [2] counts in-person meetings, live phone calls and other real-time voice or video exchanges as live contact, and leaves out chat rooms, text messages and other written messages a recipient can easily ignore (ABA, checked 2026-10-05).

So a written direct message or a reply left in someone's comments falls outside that ban, while a voice or video call placed through Messenger or Instagram does not. Comment [1] adds that answering a request for information is not solicitation at all. Paragraph (c) still applies no matter the medium: no coercion, duress or harassment, and no soliciting a person who has told the lawyer they want no such contact (ABA, checked 2026-10-05).

Can you post a client's testimonial or review?

A client's praise that a firm shares on social media is a communication about the lawyer's services, so Rule 7.1's ban on false or misleading communications applies to it (ABA, checked 2026-10-05). Some states add conditions of their own: Florida's Rule 4-7.13(b)(9), for example, bars a testimonial the lawyer wrote, one given in exchange for something of value, and one that lacks a disclaimer saying a reader may not obtain a similar result (The Florida Bar, checked 2026-10-05). Attorney advertising rules lists the claims that need a second look before they go out; the same checks apply whether the words sit in a Google ad or a LinkedIn post.

How do you answer a bad comment or review?

ABA Formal Opinion 496, issued January 13, 2021, holds that Model Rule 1.6(a)'s duty of confidentiality bars a lawyer from revealing anything about a client's matter in a reply to a negative review, and that a negative review, by itself, does not trigger the exception that lets a lawyer respond in self-defense (ABA, checked 2026-10-05). The same limit applies to a one-star comment under a Facebook post or a reply on a LinkedIn update, not only to a listed review. Criminal defense marketing covers what the opinion suggests saying instead and the discipline cases behind it.

Does your state treat social media differently?

State guidelines can settle what the ABA Model Rules leave open, such as whether a personal profile counts. The Commercial and Federal Litigation Section of the New York State Bar Association, in its Social Media Ethics Guidelines (updated April 29, 2019, released June 20, 2019), states as Guideline No. 2.A that a lawyer's social media profile, whether its purpose is business, personal or both, may fall under attorney advertising and solicitation rules once the lawyer uses it to communicate about her services (NYSBA, checked 2026-10-05). That edition predates New York's amendments effective June 1, 2026, which largely adopt the ABA's 2018 advertising rules (NYSBA, checked 2026-10-05), so read any state's guidelines next to its current rules; attorney advertising rules covers how New York, Florida and Texas differ.

I'm not a lawyer; my work is setting up and measuring marketing, and every state bar writes its own version of these rules. Nothing on this page is legal advice; check any of it against your own state bar or counsel before you post.

Which platform fits which part of your practice?

I found no official count of which platforms lawyers use, so match each one to who you are actually likely to reach there and what you plan to post, then check it against the rules above.

What does posting cost, and how do you count what it brings?

Unpaid posting costs attorney or staff time rather than ad spend, so the only way to judge a quarter of it is against what that time is worth and what it brought in. Count it the same way you count any other source.

A UTM is a small label appended to a link, such as ?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=profile, that Google Analytics reads to show which link sent a visit (Google, checked 2026-10-05); an intake form can also save it in a hidden field. Put one tagged link in the bio or website field of every profile, so visits that start there show up under their own source in the Traffic acquisition report instead of mixed in with other visits.

Add "social media" as its own choice on the intake question "how did you hear about the firm," separate from referrals and search, and log every direct message or comment reply that leads to a consult, since that traffic never touches the tagged link. A signed matter counts under this source only when intake recorded it that way at first contact, not when a lawyer later remembers seeing a like.

Illustrative: the solo immigration practice below, its hours and every number in its sheet, are invented for this example; none of them comes from a client.

Say the attorney posts and replies on LinkedIn and Instagram three hours a week, at a $300 hourly rate. Over a 13-week quarter that is 39 hours, or $11,700 in attorney time. Intake logged 9 consults tagged "social" that quarter: 5 came through the UTM-tagged bio link, 3 through Instagram direct messages, and 1 through a comment reply the front desk wrote down. Of those 9, 4 signed, at an average fee of $4,200 each: $16,800 collected against $11,700 in posting time, or $2,925 in time spent per signed matter.

Repeat the math with an hourly rate and an intake sheet before deciding whether that time is better spent posting or on referral calls.

If a marketing company or staff member posts on the firm's behalf, ask:

• Which state's advertising and solicitation rules did you check this account against, and when?
• Who approves a post or reply that mentions a case, even in general terms?
• Where do direct messages and comment replies that turn into consults get logged?
• Does the bio link on every profile carry a UTM tag back to intake?