Alabama attorneys must treat their websites as attorney advertising under ARPC Rules 7.1–7.5. Here is exactly what your site must include, what it cannot say, and how to stay compliant in 2026.
Sparks Simple Team
15 April 2026
Your law firm's website is attorney advertising. That is not a technicality — it is the explicit position of the Alabama Rules of Professional Conduct (ARPC), specifically Rules 7.1 through 7.5. Every page of your site, every claim about your practice, and every form clients fill out is subject to the same rules that govern your firm's print ads, billboards, and mailers.
Most attorneys know this in the abstract. Fewer have sat down and audited their website against the actual text of the rules. This guide does that for you. It covers what must appear on your site, what disclaimers are required, what language is prohibited, and what the 6-year record-keeping rule means for your web presence in practice.
This is written for Alabama attorneys. If you are licensed in multiple states, you may have additional requirements — this guide covers Alabama specifically.
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Try the Free Tool →Under ARPC Rule 7.2, attorney advertising must include certain identifying information. For a law firm website, this means:
Your firm's legal name must appear on every page — or at minimum on the header, footer, and contact page. A logo alone does not satisfy this requirement if a visitor cannot determine the firm's actual name from it. Include your phone number and primary email address where they are easy to find without scrolling.
Your website must list at least one physical office address in Alabama. A P.O. box or virtual office address does not meet this requirement for advertising purposes. If your firm has multiple locations, list the primary address and make it clear which office handles initial consultations.
Every attorney listed on your website — whether as a named partner, associate, or "our team" member — should have their Alabama State Bar number displayed alongside their name. This is not always strictly required by the written rules, but it is the standard that the Alabama State Bar's Office of General Counsel expects and recommends, and it protects you in any review of your advertising materials.
If any attorney at your firm is licensed in multiple states, or if the firm handles matters in jurisdictions beyond Alabama, you must clearly state where each attorney is admitted to practice. This is not optional — ARPC Rule 7.5(b) specifically requires multi-jurisdictional disclosure in advertising materials.
Under ARPC Rule 7.2(e), all advertising communications must include the name and office address of at least one attorney or law firm responsible for its content. For a website, this typically means a footer credit or an "About" page statement identifying who is responsible for the site's content.
Alabama does not require a specific word-for-word disclaimer for law firm websites, but certain concepts must be communicated clearly. The rules have evolved — the old approach of including one long paragraph of boilerplate at the bottom of every page has been replaced by a more targeted requirement to make specific statements where they are contextually relevant.
This disclaimer must appear on any page that contains substantive legal information — explanations of the law, FAQs about legal processes, descriptions of how cases work, and similar content. It does not need to appear on every single page, but it must appear where a reader could reasonably believe they are receiving legal counsel.
The most reliable placement: a clear statement at the top or bottom of any blog post, FAQ page, or practice area description. A site-wide footer disclaimer alone may not be sufficient if the content is detailed enough to be mistaken for legal advice.
This disclaimer must appear on or near any contact form, email submission link, or online intake tool. The Alabama State Bar has been explicit that the act of submitting information through a website form does not create an attorney-client relationship — but it is the attorney's obligation to make that clear to the potential client before they submit the form, not after.
The correct placement is immediately adjacent to the submit button or at the top of the contact form — not buried in a terms of service page or in the site-wide footer three scrolls away from the form itself.
Any case result — a verdict amount, a settlement figure, a charge being dropped, a custody arrangement secured — requires this disclaimer. ARPC Rule 7.1(b) specifically prohibits advertising that creates an "unjustified expectation" about results. The results disclaimer is what prevents a specific result from creating that expectation.
This applies to testimonials as well. If a client testimonial references a specific outcome ("They got my charges dropped"), the disclaimer must appear with or near that testimonial.
If your website states or implies that your firm works on a contingency fee basis — "no fee unless we win," "you pay nothing unless we recover" — you must disclose that clients may still be responsible for costs even if the case is unsuccessful (unless that is not the case for your practice). ARPC Rule 7.2(c) requires this disclosure in any contingency fee advertising.
ARPC Rule 7.1 prohibits attorney advertising that is false, fraudulent, misleading, or deceptive. For websites, this creates specific restrictions on the language firms commonly want to use.
"Best," "top," "leading," "premier," and similar superlatives are prohibited unless they are substantiated by an independent, verifiable source. Saying "Birmingham's Top Personal Injury Firm" in your hero section without the ability to document the basis for that claim is a Rule 7.1 violation.
Third-party awards and rankings (Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell) are permissible if you received the designation and you accurately describe what the designation means. You cannot use them out of context or imply they represent a broader status than was actually awarded.
Under ARPC Rule 7.4, an attorney may not advertise that they are a "specialist" in a field unless they have been certified as a specialist by the Alabama State Bar or another organization accredited by the American Bar Association. "I focus my practice on..." or "Our firm handles primarily..." are acceptable. "I am a specialist in..." is not, unless you hold the actual certification.
This catches a lot of websites off guard. It is very common for attorneys with deep experience in one area to describe themselves as specialists — colloquially, the word fits. But under Alabama's rules, the word has a specific legal meaning, and using it without certification violates Rule 7.4.
Any language that guarantees, promises, or implies a certainty of outcome is prohibited. "We will get your charges dropped" and "we win our cases" are both violations. The distinction between a permissible result statement ("we have obtained dismissals in cases involving X") and a prohibited guarantee ("we will get your case dismissed") is one of factual claim versus promise — and the line matters.
Comparative statements about your firm versus competitors require the same substantiation as other advertising claims. "We recover more than other firms" or "our results exceed the industry average" must have documented support or they are prohibited.
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Get a Free Website Review →Attorney profile pages — "Meet Our Team," individual attorney bio pages — are among the most scrutinized parts of a law firm website because they tend to accumulate compliance problems over time. An attorney's profile is typically written once and rarely updated, while their credentials, ratings, and practice areas evolve.
If a profile lists an attorney as a member of the Alabama State Bar, that membership must be current. If an attorney has been suspended or has left the firm, their profile must be updated or removed promptly. Bar membership information on a public website is a representation to the public — it is not merely informational.
If you list an award, say what year it was awarded and describe it accurately. "Voted Best Lawyer 2019" is permissible if accurate. Displaying a current-year award badge for an award you received four years ago is not — it implies a current status you may not hold.
If an attorney occasionally handles a type of case but does not primarily practice in that area, listing it prominently on their profile may create a misleading impression. This is not explicitly prohibited by rule, but it falls under the general prohibition on misleading advertising if a potential client would form a false impression about the attorney's experience in that area.
Contact forms are where the most common compliance problems occur — not because firms intend to mislead, but because the standard assumptions about what a form submission means can differ between the attorney and the potential client.
As noted above, this notice must appear before a visitor submits their information — not after. A thank-you page that says "please note that submitting this form does not create an attorney-client relationship" is too late. The notice must be visible at the time of submission so the visitor can make an informed decision about whether to submit.
Standard placement: a sentence or short paragraph immediately above or below the submit button. It should be visible without scrolling on both desktop and mobile screens.
If your contact form includes detailed fields asking about the facts of a case — what happened, who was involved, what injuries were sustained — be aware that the information collected may be subject to confidentiality obligations even if no formal representation is established. The Alabama State Bar has addressed this in ethics opinions: an attorney who receives potentially privileged information from a prospective client may be restricted from representing adverse parties even if representation was never formalized.
The practical implication for your website: keep the initial contact form focused on contact information and a brief description of the matter type. Collect detailed case facts during the actual consultation, not through an anonymous web form.
If your website states or implies a specific response time — "we respond within 24 hours," "24/7 availability" — you are creating an expectation that you must meet. If a prospective client submits a time-sensitive matter based on your stated response time and you fail to respond, the resulting harm may expose the firm to bar complaints or malpractice claims. Only state response times you can reliably honor.
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Start Free Trial →ARPC Rule 7.3(f) requires Alabama attorneys to retain copies of all advertising communications for six years from the date of their last dissemination. For a law firm website, this means:
You are required to retain copies of all advertising content — meaning the pages and content as they actually appeared, not just the files currently on the server. If you update your homepage, the previous version needs to be retained. If you redesign the site, the old design needs to be preserved somewhere. If you run a blog post and later delete it, you need a copy before deleting.
The record must include the content itself and documentation of when it was live. Screenshots with timestamps, export backups, or a web archive service like the Wayback Machine (supplemented by your own records) are all acceptable methods.
For record-keeping purposes, "advertising communication" means any content on your website that promotes your services to potential clients. This includes: practice area pages, attorney bios, case results, testimonials, blog posts that promote your firm's services, fee information, and your homepage generally. It does not typically include purely informational content that makes no reference to your firm's services — though the line can be blurry on a law firm blog.
The easiest way to stay compliant: schedule a monthly automated backup of your website and store it for seven years (a year of buffer beyond the required six). Many hosting providers offer automated backups as a built-in feature. For WordPress sites, plugins like UpdraftPlus or BlogVault handle this automatically. If your site is on Squarespace or Webflow, use their export functions and store the exports externally — these platforms do not retain version history for the required duration.
The Alabama Rules of Professional Conduct do not include explicit technical standards for law firm websites. However, the practical risk of a non-compliant site extends beyond the bar rules to potential client harm and malpractice exposure.
More than 60% of web traffic now arrives from mobile devices, and this percentage is higher for legal services — people searching for attorneys tend to do it on their phones, often in stressful situations. A website that is difficult to navigate on mobile is not just a conversion problem. If a potential client cannot find your contact form, cannot read your disclaimers, or cannot locate your phone number on their phone, you have failed them as a service provider before they have even become a client.
This is stated plainly because it fails surprisingly often: test your contact form regularly. Submissions can stop routing to the correct inbox after email migrations, hosting changes, or plugin updates without any visible indication on the form itself. A client who fills out your contact form and hears nothing back has been harmed by a technical failure that was entirely preventable.
No bar rule sets a required page load time, but courts and clients expect professional competence from their attorneys. A law firm website that loads slowly, has broken links on key pages, or displays an error on the contact page is an advertisement for incompetence regardless of the substantive quality of the firm's legal work.
Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to places of public accommodation — and federal courts have consistently held that websites qualify. A law firm website that is inaccessible to users with disabilities is a real litigation risk, independent of any bar compliance issue. Several law firms have faced ADA website lawsuits and settled for amounts that far exceeded the cost of making the site accessible in the first place.
The current standard courts apply is WCAG 2.1 Level AA (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). If your site meets WCAG 2.1 Level AA, you are in a defensible position. If it does not, you are exposed.
alt="") to signal they can be skipped.The two most commonly cited issues in law firm ADA lawsuits are missing alt text on images and contact forms that cannot be completed by keyboard. Both are straightforward to fix. The cost of remediation is typically a fraction of the cost of defending or settling a lawsuit.
Part 2 of this guide covered the disclaimer requirement for testimonials referencing specific results. But the rules around testimonials go further than the disclaimer, and this is where many Alabama firm websites have problems they are unaware of.
Client testimonials describing the experience of working with your firm are generally permissible. A client saying "This team was responsive, explained everything clearly, and made a difficult process manageable" describes an experience — not an outcome — and does not create a false expectation about future results.
Testimonials that reference specific outcomes — "They got my settlement to $400,000," "My charges were dropped," "We kept the house" — are not prohibited, but they require the "past results do not guarantee future outcomes" disclaimer to appear adjacent to that testimonial. Placing the disclaimer only in the site footer, three scrolls away from the testimonials section, does not satisfy the requirement.
A privacy policy is not directly required by the Alabama Rules of Professional Conduct. But if your website collects any personal information through a contact form — name, phone, email, or a description of a legal matter — you have a practical obligation to explain what happens to that information. ARPC Rule 1.6 (confidentiality) also creates an ethical overlay on how information from prospective clients is handled, even before any representation is established.
The privacy policy should be accessible from every page via a footer link. A clear, plain-English document of 400 to 600 words covering the points above is more useful than a 4,000-word SaaS-style template that does not apply to a law firm's actual data practices.
An Alabama law firm website that transmits contact form submissions over an unencrypted HTTP connection has a potential confidentiality problem under ARPC Rule 1.6. That rule requires attorneys to make reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized disclosure of client-related information. Collecting a prospective client's name, contact details, and description of a legal matter over an unencrypted connection is not a reasonable effort to protect that information.
Most modern websites run on HTTPS by default — Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, and major WordPress hosts include SSL certificates automatically. But older sites, recently migrated sites, or sites with mixed content can have gaps that are not obvious without checking.
An expired SSL certificate causes every visitor to see a security warning. Beyond the ethical issue, a certificate warning stops most people from submitting a contact form — the harm is immediate and practical.
When your firm's website links to a Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, or Instagram account, those profiles are also attorney advertising subject to the same ARPC rules. The bar rules do not stop at the edge of your domain. They follow the attorney across every public platform used to promote legal services.
The same disclaimer requirements that apply to your website apply to your social profiles. If your LinkedIn firm page lists case results or client testimonials, the "past results" disclaimer must appear on that profile — not just on your website. If your Facebook page includes attorney bios that describe specializations, those descriptions must comply with ARPC Rule 7.4 in the same way your website bios do.
The practical compliance risk with social media is that profiles are updated casually and frequently — a quick post about a case result, a staff member adding an uncertified specialization to their bio, a client comment left up that implies guaranteed outcomes. Any of these can create the same compliance problems that would be caught on the main website but slip through unnoticed on social platforms.
Any social media post that constitutes attorney advertising is subject to the 6-year record-keeping requirement under ARPC Rule 7.3(f). This is one of the most commonly overlooked compliance gaps for firms with active social media accounts. Screenshots or exports of advertising posts should be archived alongside your website backup records.
A Google Business Profile (GBP) for a law firm is attorney advertising. This is rarely covered in bar compliance guides — but a GBP listing is a public-facing representation of your practice that potential clients use to decide whether to contact you, and it is subject to the same rules as your website.
Most Alabama attorneys will never receive a bar complaint specifically about their website. But complaints about attorney advertising do happen, and a letter from the Alabama State Bar's Office of General Counsel (OGC) about website content can be disorienting if you do not know what to expect.
Website-related advertising complaints come from two main sources: competing attorneys who flag websites they believe are non-compliant, and the OGC itself, which conducts periodic reviews of attorney advertising in Alabama. Complaints from clients about website content are less common in this specific category — those tend to be filed as separate grievances about the representation itself.
An initial contact from the OGC about your website is typically a letter identifying specific content the Office believes may not comply with the ARPC, and requesting your response within a stated deadline — usually 20 to 30 days. This is not an accusation of misconduct. It is an inquiry, and your response is an opportunity to explain the context of the content, correct a misunderstanding, or demonstrate that you have already addressed the concern.
The most common resolution for advertising inquiries: the attorney modifies the website to address the concern, confirms the change in writing, and the matter is closed without formal discipline. The OGC is generally more interested in compliance than punishment on advertising issues — they want the problem fixed, not a hearing.
The attorneys who have the worst outcomes in advertising complaints are those who became adversarial, delayed responding, or failed to treat the initial inquiry seriously. The attorneys who have the best outcomes are those who respond promptly, demonstrate they understand the rules, and show the problem is already corrected.
Use this interactive checklist to audit your own site against every requirement covered above. Progress is saved automatically in your browser, and you can print or save it as a PDF.
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