Rule 7.1 Communications Concerning a Lawyer's Services
Information About Legal Services
Rule Text
A lawyer shall not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer’s services. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, a communication is false or misleading if it:
(a) contains a material misrepresentation of fact or law, or omits a fact necessary to make the statement, considered in light of all of the circumstances, not materially misleading;
(b) is likely to create an unjustified expectation about results the lawyer can achieve, or states or implies that the lawyer can achieve results by means that violate the rules of professional conduct or other law; or
(c) compares the lawyer’s services with other lawyers’ services, unless the comparison can be factually substantiated.
Ethics Committee Comment
The 2002 version of ABA Model Rule 7.1 eliminated subsections (a)-(c) of the former version of the Model Rule in favor of a more general prohibition on false or misleading communications. The New Hampshire rule retains subsections (a)-(c) because of the specific guidance they provide to the practitioner. At the same time, the New Hampshire rule adopts the general prohibition on false or misleading communications and provides explicitly that the subsections of the rule are illustrative, not limiting. New Hampshire Rule 7.1(a) also maintains the provision of the predecessor New Hampshire rule that a determination of whether a communication is materially misleading must be made “in light of all the circumstances.”