Short answer: yes, and with far more room than you think. Law firms can send marketing emails in every U.S. state. A newsletter going to people who know you is treated as advertising, which is permitted, not solicitation, which is the rule lawyers actually worry about. The practical requirements are handled by any real email platform before you write a word.
I have some version of this conversation nearly every time a law firm owner gets close to starting a newsletter. Everything is agreed. The list exists. The topic ideas are good. And then, usually in the last five minutes, somebody says it: “Wait — are we even allowed to do this?”
The question almost never comes from someone who read the rules and found a problem. It comes from a general sense that marketing must be mostly forbidden, and that the safest move is to do less of it.
The rules are considerably more generous than that instinct suggests. I think it is worth knowing how generous, because the gap between what lawyers believe they can do and what they can do is enormous, and it is costing firms their best marketing channel.
Let’s look at what the rules really say…
Almost all of the anxiety here traces back to one blurred line. Advertising and solicitation are different things, governed by different rules.
Advertising is permitted. Under the ABA Model Rules, Rule 7.2 says you may advertise your services through written, recorded, or electronic communication. The main limit, from Rule 7.1, is the one you would expect: don’t be false or misleading. Don’t guarantee outcomes you can’t guarantee.
Solicitation is the narrower thing, and it’s what Rule 7.3 addresses. Read its definition closely, because the details do the work. A solicitation is a communication directed to a specific person the lawyer knows or reasonably should know needs legal services in a particular matter, offering to provide those services.
A specific person. A particular matter. Known to need help right now.
A weekly newsletter to past clients, referral partners, and people who subscribed on your website is none of those things. You aren’t writing to one identified person about one identified problem. You’re publishing to a list. That’s advertising, the permitted category.
And the trend has been moving toward more freedom, not less. The 2018 amendments to the Model Rules narrowed Rule 7.3 to “live person-to-person” contact: in-person approaches, phone calls, real-time chat. The logic is about pressure: those formats put someone on the spot with no room to think. An email doesn’t do that. It sits in an inbox. It can be ignored, deleted, or read next Tuesday, and the reader is in complete control the entire time.
Rule 7.3 then goes further and names people you may contact even when something is a solicitation: other lawyers, family, close friends, anyone with a prior business or professional relationship, and people who routinely use the kind of legal services you offer.
Look at who is on a typical law firm list. Former clients have a prior professional relationship. Referral partners are other lawyers and professionals. Subscribers raised their hand and asked. Even under the strictest reading available, the exceptions cover almost everyone you’d want to email.
The practical requirements for email marketing are already handled
On the federal side, the CAN-SPAM Act governs commercial email. It is not a ban. It is a short list of conditions, and it is worth seeing how mundane they are: identify yourself honestly, use a subject line that matches the content, include a real mailing address, give people an easy way to unsubscribe, and honor it within 10 business days. The mechanism has to stay live for at least 30 days after you send.
Every item on that list is a footer setting or a default behavior in any real email platform. Your address and unsubscribe link live in the template. Opt-outs process themselves. If you’re using an actual email service provider rather than blind-copying two hundred people from Outlook, this is already done.
One thing worth knowing: if an agency sends on your behalf, responsibility is shared rather than transferred. That isn’t a reason to avoid help. It’s a reason to use someone who knows what they’re doing.
Your state’s version of the advertising rules is what governs you, and states vary a little. Some ask for a label on certain communications, some ask you to keep copies. These are formatting habits, not obstacles. Twenty minutes with your state bar’s advertising guidance, or one call to the ethics hotline most bars run for free, settles it permanently. General information here, not legal advice. I’m not your ethics counsel.
What this opens up for your law firm
Once you understand that you’re publishing rather than soliciting, the creative question changes completely. Most lawyers assume a firm email has to be about the law: a case update, a statute change, something safely professional. That assumption produces newsletters nobody reads, which then get cited as evidence that email doesn’t work.
But nothing in the rules requires your newsletter to be about law. You can write about the book you just finished and why you disagreed with it. The hiring problem you finally solved. What you noticed at a conference. The reason you turned down a case. Something useful you learned about running a business, from someone who runs one.
That’s the material that gets replies. And replies are what turn a list into referrals, because the referral partner who reads your email every week and occasionally writes back is the one who remembers your name when their client needs someone.
The risky behavior looks nothing like this. It’s buying a list of accident victims and emailing them about their accident. It’s claiming results you can’t support. It’s hiding who you are. That’s a different activity entirely, and nobody reading this is contemplating it.
What I’ve watched for years is the compliance question quietly becoming a socially acceptable reason not to start. It sounds responsible. It sounds like diligence. But a firm that spends eight months looking into the rules hasn’t avoided a risk. It has chosen a different one, which is staying invisible to its own referral network for another year.
Check your state’s rules. Then go write something worth reading.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need permission before emailing someone?
Federal law is opt-out rather than opt-in, so consent isn’t strictly required. But build a permission-based list anyway. Not for legal reasons, for practical ones. People who asked to hear from you open your email. People who didn’t, don’t, and your deliverability suffers for it.
Does a newsletter to past clients count as advertising?
If it promotes your services, yes, which means it shouldn’t be false or misleading. It’s typically not a solicitation, since it isn’t directed to a specific person about a specific matter, and former clients fall within the prior-relationship exception anyway.
Does my newsletter have to be about legal topics?
No, and the best email newsletters for law firms usually aren’t. Stories, opinions, business lessons, and things you found interesting all work. Your personality is the differentiator. No rule requires you to sound like a statute.
What needs to appear in the email itself?
A real mailing address, a working unsubscribe link, accurate sender details, and a subject line that matches the content. Some states ask for a label on certain communications. Your email platform covers the first four automatically.
How fast do I have to honor an unsubscribe?
Within 10 business days, with the opt-out mechanism staying functional for at least 30 days after sending. Every real platform does this for you the moment someone clicks.