Short answer: In Indiana, Rules 7.1 through 7.5 of the Indiana Rules of Professional Conduct govern attorney advertising, with the Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission administering enforcement. Indiana is a good place to examine a requirement that appears in some form in nearly every state and that almost no firm tests properly: the expectation that a required disclosure be conspicuous. This guide sets out the Indiana attorney advertising rules that apply to a law firm website.
Conspicuous is not a property of your HTML. It is a property of what renders on the device in the reader’s hand, and that is where firms stop checking.
Conspicuous is a rendering question
A disclosure exists in three different places, and only the third one counts. It exists in the source code, where a developer put it. It exists in the desktop layout, where the marketing team reviewed it. And it exists in the rendered mobile viewport, where roughly two-thirds of your visitors will actually encounter it, or fail to.
Compliance reviews are conducted on the second version. They are done on a laptop, at full width, by someone who knows the disclaimer is there and scrolls until they find it. That process cannot detect the failure modes that matter.
If a required disclosure renders at nine pixels, in light grey on white, below a footer accordion that is collapsed by default on mobile, it is present in the code and absent from the communication.
The four ways disclosures disappear on mobile
The collapsed accordion. Responsive footers routinely collapse into tappable sections on small screens. If the disclaimer lives inside one, it is hidden by default and the visitor must choose to open a section labelled something like “Legal” to see it. A disclosure the reader has to hunt for is doing none of its work.
The sticky call bar. Mobile law firm sites often pin a “Call now” bar to the bottom of the viewport. It frequently covers the last forty to sixty pixels of the page, which on many templates is exactly where the disclaimer sits.
Inherited font sizing. Footer text set in relative units can compute to seven or eight pixels once mobile scaling is applied. It renders, and it is unreadable.
Contrast that passed on desktop. Grey-on-white at a ratio that looks acceptable on a bright monitor can be practically invisible on a phone outdoors. Accessibility contrast standards are a good proxy for legibility, and a disclaimer that fails them is hard to defend as conspicuous.
How to actually test it
Open the page on a real phone. Not a browser window resized to look like a phone, which does not reproduce sticky elements or mobile font scaling reliably. Scroll to the disclosure without using search. Read it. If you cannot read it comfortably at arm’s length, it is not conspicuous.
Then do the same test on the two page types nobody checks: the paid-search landing page and the thank-you page after a form submission. Both are frequently built outside the main template and inherit none of its footer. This is the same gap examined in the Georgia guide.
A disclosure that must be prominent belongs near the claim it qualifies, at body-text size, in body-text contrast.
Where disclosures fail, by frequency
| Failure | Visible on desktop | Visible on mobile |
|---|---|---|
| Disclaimer inside collapsed footer accordion | Yes | No, until tapped |
| Covered by sticky call-now bar | Yes | Partially or not at all |
| Font scales below 10px | Yes | Technically, not practically |
| Low-contrast grey on white | Marginal | Often not |
| Absent from landing page template | No | No |
Why this matters beyond Indiana
Every state that requires a disclosure attaches some expectation about how noticeable it must be, whether the rule uses the word conspicuous, prominent, clear or reasonably understandable. None of those tests are satisfied by presence in the markup.
This is the most mechanically checkable item in this entire series, and it is the one most often skipped, because it requires picking up a phone rather than reading a rule. The Arkansas guide covers the related question of whether the disclosure is anywhere near the claim in the first place.
Indiana attorney advertising rules: frequently asked questions
Which rules govern attorney advertising in Indiana?
The Indiana Rules of Professional Conduct, principally Rules 7.1 through 7.5. The Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission administers the disciplinary process.
What makes a website disclaimer conspicuous?
In practice: readable size, adequate contrast, visible without an extra interaction, and positioned near the claim it qualifies. Presence in the page source is not the standard any rule is aiming at.
Can a disclaimer live in the footer?
A general disclaimer often can. A qualification attached to a specific claim, such as a case result or a fee statement, is much weaker in a footer, particularly on a long mobile page where the reader may never reach it.
Do landing pages need the same disclosures as the main site?
Yes. A campaign landing page is a communication about legal services in the same way any other page is, and it is the page type most likely to be built outside the main template and to inherit no footer at all.
Does Indiana require advertising to be filed?
This guide does not state Indiana’s current filing position, because filing and retention requirements change and are easy to describe out of date. Confirm it with the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission.
Indiana attorney advertising rules: the short version
If you take one thing from this guide, take this: open your website on an actual phone and try to read your own disclaimer. That single test finds more real compliance failures than any amount of rule-reading, and most firms have never run it.
Official source: the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission.
Legal Web Agency is a marketing agency, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. No required disclaimer wording, font size or filing requirement is quoted here. Confirm current requirements with the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission or your ethics counsel.
Related reading: Attorney Advertising Rules by State, plus the Arkansas and Oregon guides. We build DUI law firm websites for firms across the USA.
