What to Publish Beside a Case Result Figure

The number is the claim

A results page looks like a neutral list of facts, which is why it rarely gets the scrutiny a practice area page gets. Treated as advertising, though, each line is a statement about what you can do for the next client, and every state’s rules reach it on that basis.

That has a practical consequence worth sitting with. A figure can be perfectly accurate and still break a rule, because the problem is rarely the number. It is what the number implies once the surrounding facts are missing. A $3 million verdict that was cut to $400,000 on appeal is a true number and a misleading page. A $2 million settlement in an uncontested default is a true number that tells a reader nothing about your trial work.

So the useful question is not whether you may publish figures, because every state lets you. It is what each figure has to carry, and that answer changes as you cross a state line.

What four states actually require

The disclaimer everyone adds, and what it does not cover

The standard advice is to put “Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome” under your figures. It is sensible advice, and Louisiana does require a disclaimer of that kind on any results reference. But two things about that sentence are widely misunderstood, and both of them matter if you practice in more than one state.

First, Florida and New Jersey do not prescribe one for a results page. Florida’s disclaimer duty sits at Rule 4-7.13(b)(9) and attaches to a testimonial that reports results. New Jersey’s familiar sentence, “Results may vary depending on your particular facts and legal circumstances,” comes from Opinion 15, issued in 1993 and concerned with testimonial letters. Opinion 49 superseded it on 30 September 2025, and again addresses endorsements and testimonials. Both govern law firm client testimonials, which means a client speaking about their own experience, not your list of outcomes. Neither is a results-page rule, and treating one as if it were leaves the actual duties unmet.

Second, a disclaimer does not repair an incomplete figure. A caveat satisfies nothing in Texas 7.01(g), which asks for a number. Florida’s test asks whether a reader can check the result, and a caveat adds no facts. New Jersey asks whether a fact necessary to the statement has been left out, and a general warning does not supply it.

Across 18 firm results pages, ten carry a disclaimer. None of the 1,820 published figures carries the attorney fees Louisiana asks for, and three say anything about what the client actually received.

What Texas asks for, and why it is hard to retrofit

Rule 7.01(g) is narrow and sharp, and it is the single duty in this subject that no competing guide mentions. It bites only when you advertise a verdict and know it was later reduced or reversed, or that the case settled for less. When it bites, a caveat will not do: you must publish the amount the client ultimately received, as prominently as the headline figure.

Retrofitting that to an existing page is harder than it sounds, because the information lives in your file rather than on your site. A ten-year-old results list rarely records which verdicts survived appeal intact. The practical answer is to check the entries you still advertise and drop the ones you cannot document, rather than to publish a figure you are no longer sure about.

Comment 10 adds a second duty that is easy to miss. You may claim credit for a result only if you played a substantial role in obtaining it. Lead counsel qualifies, as does the lawyer primarily responsible for a settlement; beyond those two, the comment says the answer depends on the facts. A firm-wide list republished on every attorney bio page attributes every result to every lawyer, and that is the shape the comment warns about.

Making a figure checkable

Florida’s standard asks a single question: is the result objectively verifiable. The Committee Notes make that test concrete in three ways worth borrowing whatever state you practice in, because they describe how a true figure goes wrong.

What makes a figure checkable in practice is mundane, and costs a line of text. Give the kind of case, the year, whether a jury or a negotiation produced it, and which court heard it. Of 1,820 figures, 1,292 name the kind of case and 37 give a year. Seventeen give case type, year and verdict-or-settlement together.

The year matters more than it looks. Nobody can check an undated figure against a docket, and it quietly implies recency. A reader seeing a $4 million verdict assumes it is recent work. If it is from 2009, the page has told them something untrue without saying anything false.

Gross, net, and who paid the fees

A headline recovery is not what the client banked. Fees and case costs come out of it first, and a reader with no reason to think otherwise assumes the number on your page is what the client took home.

Louisiana addresses this by statute. An advertisement referring to a settlement or verdict must disclose all attorney fees paid in connection with it, in the same advertisement. In print, that disclosure must run at least half the size of the largest font. That is a quantified prominence requirement, not a general instruction to be conspicuous.

No other state in this group requires the fees. But the underlying problem is not confined to Louisiana, because a figure a reader misreads is a figure that misleads under Florida’s and New Jersey’s general tests. Saying whether a number is the gross recovery or the client’s share costs a few words and removes the ambiguity.

A results page is a standing claim

Entries age while the page goes on making the claim, which is the part firms tend to miss when they treat a results list as finished work. Texas’s duty attaches to “each advertisement of the verdict,” so a listing you leave up is an advertisement you are still running. A verdict reduced three years after you published it brings the duty with it.

That turns the page into something you maintain rather than something you launch once and forget. Three habits cover most of the exposure, and none of them takes long.

Taking an entry down is not an admission that publishing it was wrong. Rules change, appeals finish, and files get thin. A page that reflects what you can currently verify is doing its job.

Awards and comparisons beside your results

Results pages usually carry badges, and badges are comparisons. New Jersey’s RPC 7.1(a)(3) permits one on three conditions. The communication must name the comparing organization, and the basis must stand up to substantiation. The page must also carry “No aspect of this advertisement has been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey” in a readily discernible manner. Opinion 48 adds that the information must not sit at the bottom of a page or in tiny print, and must appear in proximity to the award.

Of the four pages in this sample showing an award or rating mark, none carries that disclaimer on the page. Three of those four firms practice outside New Jersey, so the rule does not reach them at all. The pattern is the point. The rules treat a badge as one of your lawyer specialist claims, with conditions of its own, sitting on the same page as your figures.

Consent, and what a public record does not settle

Before the advertising rules, there is the duty of confidentiality. Confidentiality covers information relating to a representation. A case description can identify a client even with the name removed, through a small community, an unusual injury or a named defendant.

Firms sometimes assume a verdict is fair to publish simply because it already sits in the public court record, which feels like permission and is not. That the information is public does not by itself make it yours to advertise. Get written consent saying what you will publish and in what detail, and ask after the matter closes. Anonymizing reduces the exposure, and it is worth doing, but it does not replace the consent you should have asked for. The same care that belongs in your law firm client intake belongs here, for the same reason.