Attorney Website Fraud: Fake Credentials, False Claims, and Deceptive Marketing

Attorneys whose websites misrepresent their experience, credentials, office locations, and the nature of their practice — and the ethics rules designed to prevent such deception.

An attorney's website is often a prospective client's first and most important impression of the lawyer they are considering hiring. For this reason, attorney advertising rules impose strict requirements on the accuracy and truthfulness of website representations. Yet attorney website fraud is disturbingly common: fake office locations designed to suggest a larger practice, inflated experience claims, misleading descriptions of credentials, photographs of attorneys who may not look as depicted, and endorsements or ratings that do not mean what the website implies. The Ethics Reporter investigates attorney websites that appear to cross the line from aggressive marketing into actionable misrepresentation, helping prospective clients make informed decisions about who they hire.

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