Texas Attorney Advertising Rules and Automated Text Intake

Last reviewed 31 July 2026  ·  Written for personal injury firms switching on automated text intake in Texas.

Is an automated reply to a web form a solicitation communication in Texas?

No. Texas Disciplinary Rule 7.01(b)(2)² defines a solicitation communication as one made to a specific person who has not sought the lawyer's advice or services. Someone who submits your contact form or calls your office has sought your services. The reply is not a solicitation communication, so Rule 7.03's restrictions do not attach to it.

Here is the definition in full:

Three elements have to be present at once: pecuniary motivation, a specific person, and that person not having sought your services. Inbound intake fails the third element every time, by definition. The lead initiated contact.

This is not a loophole and it is not clever drafting. It is the same logic that runs through California, Arizona and the ABA Model Rule the Texas rule was rewritten to track in 2021. Solicitation rules exist to protect people from being approached; they are not aimed at firms answering their own phone.

What does Rule 7.03 actually restrict?

Rule 7.03 restricts covered solicitation communications. Paragraph (b)² covers in-person, regulated telephone or electronic, and social-media contact, subject to listed exceptions. Paragraph (c) adds labeling and format requirements.

Rule 7.03(c)² is the one people quote. It prohibits a solicitation communication that is misleadingly designed to resemble a legal pleading or official document, and it prohibits one that is not plainly marked "ADVERTISEMENT". For text messages the rule is specific: the first word in the message must be "ADVERTISEMENT" in all capital letters. The same three exceptions from 7.03(b) apply.

Note what 7.03(d) is, because it is regularly misquoted as the labeling rule. It is not. It says a lawyer may not enter into an agreement for, charge for, or collect a fee for professional employment obtained in violation of Rule 7.03(a), (b), or (c). It is the penalty clause: break the solicitation rules and you cannot get paid for the case you got that way.

Rule 7.03(e) then restricts paying a referral service or intermediary that solicits on your behalf, which is worth reading closely if any part of your lead flow involves a third party contacting people for you.

The five subsections do genuinely different jobs, and they are quoted interchangeably far too often:

What does the ADVERTISEMENT rule look like in practice?

It changes the first word of an outbound text and nothing about an inbound one. Two messages that read almost identically to a recipient sit on opposite sides of Rule 7.03(c), and the thing that decides it is who started the conversation.

Worth being blunt about the second message: labeling it correctly does not make it permitted. Rule 7.03(b) restricts solicitation by regulated electronic contact unless the recipient is another lawyer, has a family or prior business relationship with you, or is an experienced user of that type of legal service. A stranger from an accident report is none of those. The label is the smallest of the problems on that message.

What does a compliant Texas intake script actually look like?

A compliant Texas intake script is plain and tightly limited. It names the firm, says the sender is not an attorney, collects facts without characterising them, uses one fixed line for requests for judgment, and avoids anything that looks official. Here is a full annotated first exchange.

Treat it as a draft to mark up with your own ethics counsel. The annotations exist so you can see what breaks if you change a line.

The Texas-specific things to check

1. Nothing that resembles a pleading. No captions, no case-style reference numbers, no "NOTICE:" headers, no demand-letter phrasing. This is the requirement most likely to be tripped by a template rather than by a sentence.
2. The ADVERTISEMENT question settled in writing. If any part of your sequence could be read as promotional rather than pure intake, ask the Advertising Review Committee rather than deciding it yourself.
3. The not-an-attorney line in the first message. Not the second, not the footer.
4. A fixed deflection line, approved by the firm. Improvisation is the failure mode, not malice.
5. The Spanish version reviewed separately. A translated deflection line that drifts into reassurance is advice in another language.

Do I have to file my intake messages with the State Bar?

Not every intake message requires filing. Rule 7.04²³ applies to an advertisement or solicitation communication and sets a ten-day filing window. A reply to a person who contacted the firm is not either category under the analysis above.

That said, this is the item most worth confirming with the Advertising Review Committee directly rather than taking anyone's word for it, including ours. Texas maintains a set of exemptions in Rule 7.05 that carve specific communications out of the filing requirement, and if your intake sequence contains anything that looks like promotional content rather than pure intake, you want a written answer from the committee rather than an inference from a blog post.

We are deliberately not printing a filing fee figure on this page. Published figures for the Texas advertising filing fee conflict across sources, and quoting a wrong number costs you real money if you rely on it. Get the current amount from the State Bar of Texas advertising review page³ linked in the sources below.

What should a Texas firm's automated intake script never say?

Nothing that states or implies the value of a claim, the strength of a case, or a limitations deadline. Nothing that says a lawyer has reviewed the matter when none has. Nothing that suggests representation has begun. And nothing dressed up to look like a court document or an official notice.

That last point deserves emphasis in Texas, because 7.03(c)'s prohibition on communications "designed to resemble a legal pleading or other legal document" is unusually explicit. Automated systems fall into this by accident more often than you would expect, usually by adopting formal-sounding headers, case-style reference numbers, or language borrowed from a demand letter template. A message that opens with something resembling a caption is a problem even if every word after it is harmless.

Keep intake language plain. "Hi, this is the after-hours line for [Firm]. Thanks for reaching out. I can take down a few details now so an attorney can call you first thing." Nobody mistakes that for a pleading.

Where does the TCPA fit in?

The federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act applies independently of the Texas rules. Statutory damages are $500 per message, or $1,500 per message for a willful or knowing violation⁴. Inbound-only intake sits in a comparatively safe posture, but the consent-revocation rules apply regardless of how the conversation started.

Since 11 April 2025, a consumer may revoke consent using any reasonable wording, and that revocation must be honoured within ten business days. The broader element of that FCC rule, which treats a revocation as applying to all message types from the sender, has been pushed to 31 January 2027⁶. The ten-business-day core is already in force.

In practice that means STOP has to work, and so do the many things people type instead of STOP. It also means someone has to be able to prove it worked. Keep the logs.

One more piece of context: Facebook v. Duguid⁵ narrowed what counts as an automatic telephone dialing system, which is why a one-to-one reply triggered by a person's own form submission is usually outside § 227(b)'s core prohibition. That is a reason to build the system inbound-only, not a reason to relax.

A short checklist before you switch anything on

• Confirm the trigger is inbound only. If the system can text a number that did not come from your own form, your own missed call, or your own tracked ad click, Rule 7.03 is suddenly in play and so is Rule 7.04.
• Read the script as the recipient. If any line reads like advice, a valuation, or a deadline, rewrite it.
• Check nothing resembles a pleading. No captions, no case numbers, no official-notice formatting.
• Ask the Advertising Review Committee in writing whether your sequence needs filing. Ten days is a short window if the answer turns out to be yes.
• Test opt-out properly. STOP, "stop texting me", "remove me", "quit" — then confirm the next message genuinely does not send.
• Approve the script in writing. Your name is on the message. The vendor's is not.