The 30-day rule, and the person who wrote to you first

We are not attorneys and this is not legal advice. Rule 4-7.18 has exceptions and conditions this piece does not cover, and how it applies to your firm’s messages is a question for your Bar counsel.

What the rule restricts

Rule 4-7.18 governs direct contact with prospective clients. In person, by telephone, and by real-time electronic contact, a lawyer generally may not solicit employment from someone with whom the lawyer has no family or prior professional relationship. Written communications are permitted with conditions, including labeling, and for personal injury and wrongful death matters there is a restriction on written solicitation within 30 days of the accident.

The word that does the work in that paragraph is solicit. The rule is about the lawyer initiating contact with someone who did not ask to hear from the lawyer.

Why the reply is a response

When a person who was in an accident this afternoon fills out your website form at 9:41 PM, they have initiated the contact. A message back that says "we received your message, an attorney can speak with you tonight or tomorrow" is a response to their inquiry. It is not the firm reaching out to a stranger; it is the firm answering someone who reached out to it. That is also why the rule’s 30-day restriction is not a reason to let the form sit until morning.

Where firms get it wrong in both directions

• • Too cautious. A firm that will not send any automated message to a PI inquiry for 30 days is not being careful; it is silent for the exact period in which the person is choosing a lawyer. The firm that replied in a minute, with a message that offered a time and said nothing else, is the one they sign with.
• • Not cautious enough. A firm that buys a list of accident reports and texts the people on it is soliciting, and doing it in real time, to strangers, inside the 30-day window. No amount of polite wording fixes that. The system will not do it, because it only replies to people who wrote first.
• • The gray middle. A person calls, hangs up before anyone answers, and the missed-call text-back goes out. They initiated the contact by calling. A text back that offers a time is a response to that call. What it says still has to survive Rule 4-7.13.

What this means for the build

LegalCRM.pro’s sequences are triggered by inbound events: a form, a text, a call, a chat. There is no way to load a list and message it. A solicitation letter or campaign the firm runs on its own is the firm’s to clear against Rule 4-7.18, including the 30-day rule and the labeling requirements; the intake system is not that campaign and is not built to be.

Questions we get asked about this

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