Lawyers must consider the legal ethics rules before they undertake any marketing or legal networking endeavor. This is particularly true with on and offline referral-related services.

LawRex, which was designed and is operated by a lawyer, was created as a solution to the ethical flaws of the other lesser online referral-related web services.

The ethics and professionalism rules vary from state to state, so it is imperative that lawyers review the ethics rules for any state or jurisdiction in which the are licensed before they agree to participate in any marketing or referral service (or in LawRex, for that matter).

LawRex has been reviewed by several state-employed ethics lawyers and not one of them has said that their licensed attorneys could not participate in LawRex. Please use the contact form if we can help answer your legal ethics questions. Even if we can't answer your question ourselves, we can probably put you in direct contact with your state representatives that can.

While LawRex is not a law firm and it cannot give legal advice, here are a few of the ethical rules that lawyers must consider:

• Direct Contact With Prospective Clients
• Referral Fee Rules
• Legal Advertising Rules
• Lawyer Referral Service Rules
• Confidentiality of Client Information
• Summary

Most state rules provide that a lawyer may not have direct in person or live contact with prospective clients (with certain exceptions for current or former clients and friends and family members). The state rules also provide that a lawyer may not engage a third party to do what the lawyer cannot do his/herself.

Many on and off-line referral related services do actively solicit prospective clients. Unfortunately, some of these services will not disclose how they go about soliciting legal consumers. As such, this should be one of the first questions that any lawyer should ask a legal referral-related business that they are considering joining.

LawRex does not have any contact with prospective legal clients not does it allow lawyers to have any contact with potential clients, yet alone “direct" contact with any prospective client. LawRex sole focus is on helping connect lawyers to lawyers. There is no other service out there that connects lawyers-to-lawyers, as all other on- and offline services require clients to submit cases to nameless faceless websites or 800 number operators and then they forward those cases to lawyers.

A number of state ethics panels have held that certain websites that only allow one attorney to join and require the participating lawyer to make referrals to participants is also an ethics violation (services akin to online or offline "leads groups"). These opinions seem to reason that since the attorney was the exclusive lawyer and he/she the other members were required to make referrals to that one lawyer, the other "leads group" members were in fact agents for the lawyer -- agents that were doing what the lawyer could not do his or herself.

LawRex was structured to avoid this ethical problem. LawRex does not require any member to ever submit a referral to any other member. Not one. Even if they do list a referral on LawRex, they are merely asking the group of lawyers -- not an individual lawyer -- if anyone in the group is interested in the referral. Non-lawyers are not allowed to participate in LawRex in any way.

With LawRex the process is exactly the same as if the lawyer picked up the phone and called another lawyer and said “hey I have a tax client here who needs to talk to a divorce attorney, you interested” or if the attorney posted the same message on a state-run or ABA list serve.

Many state ethical rules permit lawyers to enter into referral arranagements with other lawyers or even non-lawyers, so long as the arrangement is non-exclusive (i.e., it is not to just one lawyer or one firm) and it is disclosed to the client (which is discussed in the "confidentiality" section below) (see, e.g., ABA Model Rules 7.2(b)(4), which is similar to the rules of twenty six states).

Other state ethical rules permit lawyers to pay referral fees to other lawyers, but not to non-lawyers (see, e.g., Texas Rule 7.03(b); which is similar to the rules of Alabama, Connecticut, Kansas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Washington and West Virginia).

Other state ethical rules prohibit a lawyer from paying referral fees to anyone -- lawyers or non-lawyers (see, e.g., Colorado Rule 7.2(c), which is similar to Wyoming and Hawaii).

The states whose rules prohibit referral fees, can be problematic for many online lawyer referral or listing services. The question in those jurisdictions with regard to the traditional online services is whether paying the online service is paying another person to channel legal cases to the lawyer. In many cases the answer is in the affirmative.

LawRex does not have this problem, as the nominal monthly cost to access LawRex is an administrative expense. It is much like paying the law firm's phone or internet bill. The fee is not tied in any way to a lawyer receiving a referral.

Similarly, the LawRex points should be fine under these rules of the very few states that prohibit lawyer-to-lawyer referral fees as the LawRex points have no value, they are non-transferrable outside of the LawRex network, and at all times they are the sole property of LawRex -- not individual attorneys.

One might compare the LawRex points to "chips" in the game of poker. If two lawyers were to play a game of poker, they could transfer chips between themselves. At the end of the day, the lawyers could "cash out those chips." While the chips are owned by the casino or dealer, their is an implied license or ability to convert those chips to money and that money can leave the casino and be used to purchhase other items. Even if the casino would not cash in their poker chips, the tangible material that makes up the chips would be worth some small value. Thus poker chips have value -- either steming from their abilty to be converted to currency or for thier materials.

LawRex does not allow members to "cash out" LawRex points. LawRex points are non-assignable and the points disappear if a lawyer no longer wants to participate in LawRex. Since LawRex points are not tangible items, there is not even any tangible material that could have some materialistic value. Thus the LawRex points cannot be exchanged for anything of value.

Moreover, LawRex points are different than the poker chip analogy in that LawRex at all times holds and owns the points. Thus, lawyers are never exchanging points between themselves. Rather, LawRex moves the LawRex points around as it deems appropriate -- not necessarily as individual lawyers deem appropriate.

First, advertising, by definition, is a message or other communication directed at the public in order to solicit business. LawRex is not a public forum, in that it only allows licensed lawyers to participate and even then it only allows those lawyers to view communications for their practice areas/locations.

Second, LawRex does not recommend any lawyer. We simply provide a forum for lawyers to meet other lawyers who are interested in exchanging referrals. This is exactly the same as posting a request for a lawyer on the ABA or state run list-servers (most of which require members to pay their dues to participate in).

Most states provide an exception to the advertising rules which permits lawyers to participate in certain state-sponsored "lawyer referral services." In some states these "services" must be not-for-profit and/or they must meet certain filing and oversight requirements.

Most states define a "lawyer referral service" an individual or entity that solicits clients to send to lawyers. Thus, lawyer referral services are third parties that impose themselves between the lawyer and client that are not governed by the applicable attorney regulation rules. These "lawyer referral service" statutes provide some state guidance and oversight over these unregulated third parties. This regulation is necessary because these unregulated third party could send referrals to only one or a few lawyers and not to all lawyers equally or potentially violate any other legal ethics rules and the states would have no ability to control the referral service's conduct. This is why many states have found that companies that operate on- and offline to match legal consumers to lawyers are really impermissible "lawyer referral services."

The rules for most states and the ABA Model Rules expressly exempt lawyer-to-lawyer referrals from the "lawyer referral service" rules, because with lawyer-to-lawyer referrals there is no unregulated third party that is not subject to the applicable attorney regulation rules.

LawRex does not send clients to lawyers or solicit the public or allow the public to participate in LawRex in any way. LawRex does not decide which lawyers receive referrals, as participating members decide amongst themselves what referrals they want (each member is allocated the same number of points each month and they use those points to express an interest in cases listed by other lawyers). LawRex has no say in what referrals a lawyer exchanges with another lawyer. We only provide the online forum for lawyers to make the exchange.

This is the exactly the same where a law firm has more than one member or divisions and one of the lawyers sends a client to another lawyer in the same firm (e.g., the tax attorney notices a client has a real estate issue, so they send the client to the firm’s real estate lawyer). It is also the same as where smaller law firms send clients to a lawyer in another smaller law firm (e.g., the personal injury lawyer has a client who is arrested, so he sends the client over to a criminal lawyer that he/she knows). This lawyer-to-lawyer exchanges occur every day – LawRex provides a forum for lawyers to try to locate lawyers to send cases to and for lawyers to say “I would like referrals,” rather than having that lawyer pick up the phone to call another lawyer (or using the ABA or state list-serves to locate another lawyer).

V. Confidentiality

All states prohibit lawyers from disclosing client information without the client's consent (with certain exceptions). This rule applies whether the lawyer uses LawRex to send a legal case to a buddy across the street or if the lawyer simply picks up the phone and calls his buddy about a case. Before the lawyer may do so, they must get the clients consent. This is the same offline as it is online.

Thus, if a lawyer were going to help a client find another lawyer using LawRex they would ask the client, the client would consent, the lawyer would then enter the referral, the most interested attorney would then be able to contact the referring lawyer to talk about the case.

LawRex helps facilitate lawyer-to-lawyer referrals on a non-exclusive basis. LawRex was structured to avoid many of the problems posed by lesser traditional online lawyer referral and listing services. With this said, LawRex is not a law firm and expresses no opinion about legal issues. This brief note is not to be construed as a legal opinion about LawRex or any of the other lesser online traditional referral or listing service. As such, LawRex strongly encourages lawyers to review their ethical rules to determine if they can participate in LawRex or any of the other lesser traditional online lawyer referral or listing services prior to undertaking to participate in the service or services.