Law firm website: the limits of legal advertising in Italy

Anyone searching for «law firm website: the limits of legal advertising in Italy» usually starts from the right instinct: advertising for a lawyer isn't as free as advertising for a shop, but it isn't banned either, the way it was until 2006. The point is knowing exactly where the line sits today. The answer comes from two overlapping sources: Article 10 of law no. 247 of 31 December 2012, Italy's legal profession act, and Article 35 of the Forensic Code of Ethics issued by the National Forensic Council (CNF), in the version in force in 2026. Unlike other regulated professions, the rule for lawyers doesn't list a closed set of allowed topics: it permits talking about professional activity, the firm's organization and specializations, and instead bans certain qualities of the message, such as comparing yourself with other professionals, promising an outcome, and naming your own clients, even when those clients would be fine appearing.

A necessary caveat: this isn't legal advice, and it doesn't replace an opinion from your own Bar Council or a lawyer specialized in professional ethics. It's a reading of the text of two public sources, meant to clarify what's at stake before writing the website's first page.

Two sources that say the same thing

Until 2006, advertising for lawyers was, in practice, banned: the Forensic Code of Ethics allowed only minimal information, such as nameplates and qualifications. Decree-law no. 223 of 4 July 2006, the «Bersani decree», converted with amendments by law no. 248 of 4 August 2006, repealed that ban, allowing informational advertising for intellectual professions as long as it was truthful and transparent. Italy's Constitutional Court rejected challenges to its legitimacy with ruling 443 of 2007.

Law 247/2012, which reorganized the legal profession, turned that liberalization into an organic framework. Article 10 states that a lawyer is allowed informational advertising about their own professional activity, the firm's organization and structure, and any specializations and scientific or professional qualifications held, but requires that all information spread publicly, through any means, digital included, be transparent, truthful and accurate, and not comparative with other professionals, equivocal, misleading, derogatory or suggestive. Paragraph 3 adds a condition that applies to every sentence on the website: the information must refer to the nature and limits of the professional obligation.

Article 35 of the Forensic Code of Ethics reaches the same conclusion, with text that is nearly identical in its first two paragraphs, and adds practical details the law doesn't spell out.

What can be written

The three categories Article 10 allows cover most of what a law firm's website already contains: the areas the firm practices in, labour law, family law, tax law, the firm's organization, the number of lawyers, its office, any secondary offices, and the qualifications genuinely held, including specializations obtained through the procedures set by the National Forensic Council. Anyone using the title of professor may do so only if they are, or have been, a university lecturer in legal subjects, always specifying the qualification and the subject taught, while a trainee lawyer may use only, written out in full, the title «praticante avvocato».

What can't be written

Here the rule is stricter than it first appears. Three bans deserve attention, because they cover mistakes that are common on a website written without ethics review.

The first is comparative advertising: Article 35 bans giving comparative information about other professionals, with no exception. That's a sharp difference from other regulated sectors, where a comparison is allowed if it relies on measurable indicators: for lawyers, that way out doesn't exist, an implicit comparison or ranking-style language stays banned regardless.

The second is naming clients. Article 35, paragraph 8, states that in information to the public, a lawyer must not name their own clients or assisted parties, even if they consent to it. The National Forensic Council applied this rule literally in decision 294 of 2024, rejecting both the client-consent argument and the argument that the news was already public through a third party: publishing on the website that the firm won a case for a specific client, even if that client authorized it, remains a violation.

The third is promising an outcome. Neither the law nor the Code bans it in those exact words, but both require every statement to refer to the nature and limits of the professional obligation. In Italian civil case law, reaffirmed recently by the Court of Cassation, a lawyer's obligation toward a client is classified as an obligation of means, not of result: the professional must apply the diligence the profession requires, not guarantee the outcome of the case. A website that promises to always win, or a guaranteed result, doesn't just describe the work poorly: it contradicts the very nature of the engagement a lawyer can take on.

The website-specific regime, repealed in 2016

Until 2016, Article 35 contained two paragraphs written specifically for websites: a lawyer could only use a website on their own domain, without redirects, after notifying their Bar Council of the site's form and content, and the website couldn't contain commercial or promotional references, not even through internal or external links. A resolution of the National Forensic Council on 22 January 2016 removed both paragraphs, leaving the general principle in the first two paragraphs to govern the website too, like any other medium. The rest of the article, including the absolute ban on naming clients, hasn't been touched since, not even by the Code's most recent reform, in force since 1 November 2025, which concerns a different part of the Code.

What happens if it isn't respected

Violating Article 35 carries, under the text of the rule, the disciplinary sanction of censure, though in practice the body judging the case can apply a lighter sanction, such as a warning, depending on how serious the breach is. First-instance jurisdiction doesn't belong to the local Bar Council, but to the District Disciplinary Council for the relevant Court of Appeal district, a separate body that law 247/2012 created specifically to keep the disciplinary function apart from the Bar Council's administrative one. The decision can be appealed to the National Forensic Council sitting as a disciplinary court. Unlike healthcare professions, where the same violation can also reach Italy's communications authority, there's no second reporting channel for lawyers: the proceeding stays inside the forensic disciplinary system.

Where to start

Before writing the website's copy, it's worth running every page through the filter of the three allowed categories, and asking, for every sentence that doesn't clearly fit, whether it's describing a verifiable fact or promising an outcome. The same goes for a client's name cited as a success story: even with their written consent, it can't appear. A website built around these limits is still only part of a firm's online presence, as I wrote about the relationship between lawyers and artificial intelligence: the website helps people who don't yet know the firm find it, it doesn't replace word of mouth. The same disclosure obligations that apply to any business with a website apply here too, such as the mandatory data on VAT number, registered office and business register. If you'd like a second opinion on how to structure your firm's website content before writing it, get in touch: it won't replace an opinion from your Bar Council on ethics compliance, but I can help you build the rest of the site around that boundary.