Local SEO for law firms: what changes

Every claim a firm publishes about itself is a regulated communication. California's rule, approved by its Supreme Court and effective 1 November 2018, states that "A lawyer shall not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer's services", and defines the failure to include omission: a communication is false or misleading "if it contains a material misrepresentation of fact or law, or omits a fact necessary to make the communication considered as a whole not materially misleading."¹ Its first comment settles the scope question that a marketing team usually asks next: the rule "governs all communications of any type whatsoever about the lawyer or the lawyer's services".¹ A profile, a description, a reply under a review and a photo caption are all inside it. Three consequences have no counterpart in a general business. A guarantee is not permitted at all. The comment is explicit that "A communication that contains an express guarantee or warranty of the result of a particular representation is a false or misleading communication under this rule."¹ The familiar reassurance about a fee is also constrained: any communication "that states or implies 'no fee without recovery' is also misleading unless the communication also expressly discloses whether or not the client will be liable for costs."¹ The second consequence lands directly on the part of a profile everyone treats as free credibility. A truthful report of past results, or a client's own testimonial, "may be misleading if presented so as to lead a reasonable person to form an unjustified expectation that the same results could be obtained for other clients in similar matters without reference to the specific factual and legal circumstances of each client's case."¹ The published remedy is not silence but framing: "An appropriate disclaimer or qualifying language often avoids creating unjustified expectations."¹ The third is that a truthful sentence can still fail. The rule "prohibits truthful statements that are misleading" where the presentation creates "a substantial likelihood that it will lead a reasonable person to formulate a specific conclusion about the lawyer or the lawyer's services for which there is no reasonable factual foundation."¹ A comparison with other firms is named as exactly this kind of risk. Practically, that reorders the work. On a firm's profile the language of the description and the wording of review replies are reviewed against the conduct rule before anything is optimised, and the individual-attorney profiles Google permits are named under the practitioner's own name rather than the firm's where several practitioners share one office.²