What can lawyers say in Google Ads under bar advertising rules?

I’m a marketer, not a lawyer, and nothing here is legal advice. Your state bar’s rules and your ethics counsel decide what your ads may say. I built the checklist below from the rule text. States amend their rules, so check the dates on anything here.

Google reviews ads against its own policies, not against your bar’s rules. An ad can be approved and serve for months while breaking a bar rule.

“Specialist”, “expert” and “certified”

Under ABA Model Rule 7.2(c), a lawyer may say they’re certified as a specialist only if a state-approved or ABA-accredited body certified them, and the ad names that body. The model rule’s comments allow a lawyer to say they specialize in an area if that isn’t misleading. States add their own limits. California’s Rule 7.4 handles certification through its Board of Legal Specialization, and Florida restricts both “specialist” and “expert” further.

Search ads make this easy to get wrong, because the claim usually lives in a callout or a headline nobody rereads. The audit section below shows how much of it can survive in one account.

Case results and testimonials

ABA Rule 7.1’s comments warn that past results can create unjustified expectations. States go further:

• California presumes an ad misleading when it shows case results out of context or refers to money recovered (B&P Code 6158.1), and electronic ads that show a result must state the facts or say results depend on the facts (6158.3).
• Florida treats past results as deceptive unless they’re objectively verifiable (Rule 4-7.13).

A 30-character headline has no room for the context those rules ask for. I keep dollar results out of ads entirely and let the landing page carry them, with the required disclosures, if the firm wants them at all.

What every ad has to include

ABA Rule 7.2(d) requires the name and contact information of at least one lawyer or firm responsible for the ad’s content.

California added requirements on January 1, 2026. SB 37 amended Business and Professions Code section 6157.2 so that every ad names a responsible California lawyer or firm and the city, town or county of a real office. The law treats websites, landing pages and paid search as advertising and bars paid or membership-based awards. In some cases, after a State Bar complaint, a misled consumer can sue for $5,000 to $100,000 per ad. California also bars guarantees and “quick settlement” promises, and requires a contingency-fee statement to say whether the client pays costs when there’s no recovery. Firms must keep a copy of each ad for a year (6159.1). Check the statute text with counsel.

For a Search ad, the practical fix is the landing page and the assets: the responsible lawyer’s name, the office location and the required disclosures on every page an ad points to.

States that want to see your ads

Some bars require ads to be filed:

• Texas requires filing with the Advertising Review Committee within 10 days of first use, with a $100 State Bar fee (Rule 7.04). Website pages are exempt except the homepage (Rule 7.05).
• Florida requires non-exempt ads to be filed at least 20 days before use, with a $250 fee (Rule 4-7.19). Websites are exempt, but internet ads must be filed.

New York’s Appellate Division adopted amendments, effective June 1, 2026, that largely follow the ABA model, according to the NYSBA summary, with New York differences such as keeping Rule 7.5. Guides written before the change may be out of date. Confirm the current text in the court’s order.

Other states have their own filing or review rules. Look up yours before launch.

Text Google writes for you

Google can generate ad text you never wrote. Automatically created assets, AI Max text customization and Performance Max can all produce headlines and descriptions from your website. A generated line that calls the firm “the best” or promises an outcome is still the firm’s ad.

On law firm accounts I turn automatically created assets off, and leave text customization off unless someone at the firm reviews every variant in the asset report. I also turn off auto-applied recommendations, so new ads and keywords don’t go live without a review.

What I find when I audit a law firm’s ads

These claims tend to survive in ads nobody looks at anymore. In October 2026 I scanned a law firm account I’d taken over:

• The stored assets. Of 1,675 text and callout assets saved in the account, 198 (12%) used words bar rules restrict or that read as unverifiable comparisons: “top” in 98, “expert” or “experts” in 66, “expertise” in 15, “top rated” in 4, and “specialist” or “specialists” in 3.
• The enabled ads. 16 of the 46 enabled ads in enabled ad groups carried them, across 39 headlines and descriptions shaped like “Top Rated [City] Lawyers” and “[Firm]: [Practice] Experts”.
• Why nobody had noticed. None of the 16 had served in the last 30 days. All of them sat in three campaigns whose end date had passed, so Google listed the campaigns as ended while every ad inside stayed enabled. Changing one end date would have put them back in front of searchers.
• The ads that were serving. The 22 ads that were serving were clean: none of those words in 411 lines.

I paused the 16 rather than deleting anything, and wrote compliant replacements for any campaign that comes back. Pausing doesn’t retire an ad, though, since a paused ad is one click from serving again, so I list every one for the firm to review with counsel.

The lesson for any audit: search the enabled ads inside ended and paused campaigns, the stored asset library, and the default text in keyword insertion. A headline written as {KeyWord:Top [Practice] Lawyers} prints “Top [Practice] Lawyers” whenever the searcher’s keyword is too long to fit.

Ads that cross state lines

A campaign targeted to a metro area can serve across a state line. ABA Model Rule 8.5 covers which state’s rules apply. Ask counsel before targeting outside the states where the firm’s lawyers are admitted, and set the location option to people in the area rather than people interested in it.

My checklist

1. My default: no “specialist”, “expert” or “certified” without the certifying body named, unless counsel clears it for your state.
2. No dollar results or outcome promises in ad text.
3. Responsible lawyer, contact details and, in California, the office location on every landing page, confirmed with counsel.
4. Automatically created assets off, and text customization off unless reviewed.
5. Filing done where your state requires it.
6. A copy of every ad kept for as long as your state requires.
7. Enabled ads inside ended or paused campaigns, the stored asset library, and keyword-insertion default text all checked for the same words.

When to bring me in

Bring me in when the account reports leads that never sign, when intake can’t tell you which calls came from ads, or when cost per signed case keeps rising.

I'm Conner Crowe, and I write every audit myself. Send the free audit request and add me as a read-only user, and within 24 hours of access you'll have a written read on what your account counts as a conversion and what to fix first. No call needed, and nothing in your account or store changes.

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