Since January 1, 2026, California’s SB 37 has treated almost every page of a law firm’s website as an advertisement, required a responsible attorney and an office location to be named conspicuously on it, and created a fast statutory complaint process with real money attached. This article walks through what the statute asks of a website and what a marketing-compliance review looks for. It describes the published rules as we read them for review purposes; it is not legal advice.
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What changed on January 1, 2026
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SB 37 amended California Business and Professions Code sections 6153 to 6158.7, the part of the code that governs attorney advertising. It did three things that matter for a website: it widened what counts as an advertisement, it made two disclosures mandatory on every advertisement, and it built an enforcement process with deadlines measured in days and statutory damages per advertisement. It is the newest law aimed at law-firm websites, not the only one. The Rules of Professional Conduct 7.1 to 7.5, the electronic-media statutes in sections 6158 to 6158.3, and practice-area disclosure rules all still apply.
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Your website is an advertisement
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Section 6157 defines an advertisement broadly: any written, recorded or electronic communication that encourages someone to hire a lawyer. Under that definition a practice-area page, an attorney bio, a results page and a “free consultation” banner are all advertising, and so are the newsletter, the drip email and the social post that point back to them. The statute’s definitions of “lawyer” and “licensee” reach the lawyer’s agents too, which is why the marketing agency that publishes for a firm does not take the firm’s exposure with it. The complaint process runs to the firm.
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Two consequences follow for a website review. First, old content counts: a results page from 2019 that is still live is still an advertisement today. Second, there is no “just a website” carve-out. The rules apply page by page.
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The two disclosures every advertisement needs
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Each advertisement must conspicuously identify at least one responsible California-licensed attorney, or the firm, and the city or county of a bona fide office, or the attorney’s State Bar address of record. On a website the practical questions a review asks are:
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- Is the responsible attorney or firm named on every page, not only on the About page?
- Is an office city or county stated, and is it a bona fide office?
- Is the disclosure conspicuous where it appears, or buried in low-contrast footer text that a visitor would not notice?
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Many firms carry the identification in a site-wide footer block. A review treats the presence of the block as one question and its conspicuousness as another, and it flags the second as a matter for the responsible attorney to judge, because “conspicuous” is a question of context that software cannot settle.
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Content the statute prohibits or presumes deceptive
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SB 37 made some long-standing problems explicit. Guarantees of recovery, of a favorable verdict or of compensation are prohibited. Language promising money fast, the “quick cash” and immediate-settlement style of copy, is prohibited. Purchased or pay-to-play awards and badges presented as earned recognition are a problem under the misleading-communication rule.
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The electronic-media statutes add presumptions. Under section 6158.1, case results presented out of context and messages about money recovered are presumed deceptive in electronic media, which by definition includes computer networks. Under section 6158.3, dramatizations and portrayals of results require disclosure statements. A testimonial or a dollar figure on a website is therefore not automatically prohibited, but it starts from a presumption the firm has to be able to answer.
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The rules that are older than SB 37
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A website review does not stop at the new statute. The Rules of Professional Conduct 7.1 to 7.5 cover misleading communications, superlatives such as “best” or “top” without substantiation, firm names and trade names, and solicitation. Fee language such as “no fee unless we win” needs its qualifications. Practice-area rules add specific notices: the workers’ compensation fraud notice under Labor Code section 5432, and the “debt relief agency” disclosure under 11 U.S.C. section 528 for bankruptcy practices. Intake forms without a no-attorney-client-relationship statement raise a Rule 1.18 question. Each of these is labeled with its own legal basis in a review; an RPC issue is not an “SB 37 violation,” and a good report never calls it one.
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What a marketing-compliance review actually does
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An automated review reads the public pages of a website and matches wording patterns against these rule categories, then human quality control checks the matches before anything is reported. The result is a list of candidates for attorney review: the exact page, the exact wording matched, the rule category it falls under, and a general example of compliant wording for that category. It does not rank findings by severity and it does not state that any rule was violated. Those are decisions for the firm’s responsible attorney and, where needed, ethics counsel.
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That framing is deliberate. A review can tell a firm where to look and what rule is in play. Only a lawyer can decide what the firm should do about it.
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A short checklist for firms
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- Confirm the responsible attorney or firm and an office city or county appear on every page, conspicuously.
- Search the site for guarantee language and “quick” or “fast money” phrasing, including old blog posts.
- List every case result, dollar figure and testimonial, and ask whether each has context and the disclosures section 6158.3 requires.
- Check superlatives against what the firm can substantiate.
- Check fee statements for their qualifications and practice-area pages for the notices their practice requires.
- Ask who else publishes for the firm, and whether their work goes through the same review.
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Sources: California Business and Professions Code §§6153–6158.7 as amended by SB 37 (effective January 1, 2026); California Rules of Professional Conduct 7.1–7.5 and 1.18; Labor Code §5432; 11 U.S.C. §528. Lawthentics Limited is a marketing agency, not a law firm. This article is marketing-compliance information for orientation, not legal advice; how any rule applies to your firm is a question for your responsible attorney and ethics counsel.