Rule Library · North Carolina
Attorney advertising rules in North Carolina
What follows is what North Carolina’s published rules require of a law firm’s own advertising, in the order it usually matters: the label, past results, what you may claim about specialization, testimonials, fee statements, and filing.
This is a reading of published rules, not legal advice. Your bar, and you, decide what may be published.
The rule areas
- Advertising labelnot yet verified
- We have not read North Carolina’s text on this rule area yet, so we will not cite a rule number for it. The bar’s own URL is in the margin.
- Prior resultsCleared
- A communication that truthfully reports past results may still be misleading if presented so as to lead a reasonable person to form an unjustified expectation that the same results could be obtained without reference to the specific facts and law of each client's case; an appropriate disclaimer or qualifying language may preclude such a finding, but no single mandatory disclaimer sentence is specified in the rule text. N.C. R. Prof'l Conduct 7.1, cmt. [3].
- Specialization claimsCleared
- A lawyer shall not state that the lawyer specializes or is a specialist unless certified as a specialist by the North Carolina State Bar, an organization accredited by the North Carolina State Bar, or an organization accredited by the American Bar Association under procedures endorsed by the North Carolina State Bar, and the certifying organization's name is clearly identified in the communication. N.C. R. Prof'l Conduct 7.2(c). North Carolina has its own certification program administered through the North Carolina State Bar.
- Bar filingCleared
- No filing/submission requirement with the North Carolina State Bar or an advertising review committee was found in the Rules of Professional Conduct reviewed (Rules 7.1-7.4); advertising is instead policed after the fact via the general false/misleading standard and ethics opinions.
- Testimonialsnot yet verified
- We have not read North Carolina’s text on this rule area yet, so we will not cite a rule number for it. The bar’s own URL is in the margin.
- Fee statementsnot yet verified
- We have not read North Carolina’s text on this rule area yet, so we will not cite a rule number for it. The bar’s own URL is in the margin.
What changed recently
North Carolina's Rules 7.1 and 7.2 were fetched directly from the official ncbar.gov site; testimonials and contingency-fee-specific disclaimer requirements were not located as distinct rule text within budget and are left null rather than inferred from the general misleading-communications standard.
Check your firm’s site against North Carolina’s rules.
We read your home page and up to 4 more, then name each place your copy is missing something these rules require.