Short answer: Kentucky does not number its advertising rules the way most states do. Instead of Rules 7.1 through 7.5, Kentucky uses SCR 3.130-7.01 through 7.60, and it is one of the few states that operates a standing Attorneys’ Advertising Commission with its own regulations and advisory opinion process. This guide sets out the Kentucky attorney advertising rules as they affect a law firm website, and why Kentucky is the state where your publishing process matters as much as your copy.
Everywhere else in this series, a website is reviewed after the fact. In Kentucky, a website is closer to a document with a lifecycle.
Why Kentucky is structurally different
Two things set Kentucky apart, and both are visible in the rule numbering itself.
The first is the scheme. Most states adopted the ABA numbering and land on Rules 7.1 to 7.5. Kentucky’s advertising provisions sit inside SCR 3.130 with their own sequence: definitions at 7.01, the Commission at 7.02, advisory opinions at 7.03, communications about a lawyer’s services at 7.10, fee advertising at 7.15, advertising generally at 7.20, fields of practice at 7.40, and firm names and letterheads at 7.50. If you have been working from a national checklist keyed to “Rule 7.2”, you are reading the wrong map.
The second is the Commission. Kentucky maintains an Attorneys’ Advertising Commission that issues its own regulations and advisory opinions. That is a materially different regulatory posture from a state where the only interaction is a complaint years later.
This guide does not state what must be submitted, what is exempt, what it costs, or on what timeline. Those specifics change, they carry real consequences when described out of date, and they are the Commission’s to answer. What this guide can tell you is how to build and run a website so that whatever the answer is, you can comply with it without rebuilding.
The idea most firms have never had to consider
In a state with an advisory process tied to substantive change, a website stops being a thing you own and becomes a thing you version.
That sounds like a technicality. It is not, because of how modern law firm sites are actually maintained. Content is edited in place, in the live admin, by whoever has the login. A paralegal fixes a typo. A marketing contractor swaps the hero headline. A new practice area page appears on a Tuesday. Nobody records what changed, nobody decides whether it was substantive, and there is no copy of what the page said before.
Ask most firms what their website said about fees eighteen months ago and they cannot tell you. In Kentucky that is a worse position to be in than elsewhere.
Substantive versus cosmetic: how to think about it
The Commission decides what is substantive. But a firm still has to make a first-pass judgement every time someone edits a page, and it helps to have a consistent instinct for which side of the line an edit falls on. The distinction that tends to hold: does the edit change what a prospective client would understand about your services, your results, your fees, or who you are?
| Change | Treat as | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Fixing a typo in body copy | Cosmetic | No claim is altered |
| New practice area page | Substantive | A new claim about services offered |
| Adding a case result or settlement figure | Substantive | A results claim, the highest-risk category |
| Changing a fee or payment statement | Substantive | Fee advertising is separately addressed at 7.15 |
| Swapping a stock photo | Cosmetic | Unless it implies something about the firm |
| Adding attorney bios or a new office | Substantive | A claim about the firm’s structure, see 7.50 |
| Theme or layout update | Usually cosmetic | Unless it moves or hides a disclosure |
The last row is the one people get wrong. A redesign that relocates a disclaimer into a collapsed mobile footer has changed the communication even though not a word of copy was touched.
What a Kentucky-ready website actually needs
None of this requires expensive infrastructure. It requires four habits that most firms do not have.
A staging site. Changes get made and reviewed somewhere that is not the live site, then pushed deliberately. This is standard practice in every other industry and remains unusual on law firm websites. It also means a substantive change can be prepared and held rather than published the moment it is written.
A change log. A dated record of what changed and who approved it. A shared document is enough. WordPress revisions are a partial substitute, but they are stored per page, are frequently limited or pruned for database performance, and are lost if a page is deleted, so they are not a record you would want to rely on alone.
One named owner. Somebody at the firm, a lawyer, decides whether an edit is substantive before it goes live. If the answer is “our agency handles the website”, nobody is making that call.
Archived copies. Periodic snapshots of the pages that carry claims, so you can show what the site said on a given date. Practice area pages, fee pages, results pages, and the disclaimer.
This is also simply better website management. Firms that publish through a staging site with a named owner make fewer mistakes of every kind, including the expensive ones that have nothing to do with the rules.
The agency question
If a marketing agency edits your site, the obligations remain yours. That has a specific practical consequence in a state with an advisory process: you need to know when your agency changes something, and a surprising number of arrangements are built so that you do not.
Ask three questions of whoever maintains your site. Do I get told before a substantive change goes live? Can I retrieve what a page said on a date I choose? Do I control the domain and hosting account, or does the agency? The third is not strictly an advertising-rules question, but firms discover its importance at the worst possible moment. We cover the ownership side of it in our guide to law firm website hosting.
Kentucky attorney advertising rules: frequently asked questions
Which rules govern attorney advertising in Kentucky?
Kentucky uses SCR 3.130-7.01 through 7.60, administered with the involvement of the Attorneys’ Advertising Commission, which issues its own regulations and advisory opinions. The numbering differs from the Rules 7.1 to 7.5 scheme used in most states, so national checklists do not map cleanly onto Kentucky.
Does a Kentucky law firm website have to be submitted to the Commission?
This guide does not state Kentucky’s current submission requirements or exemptions, because they change and are consequential to get wrong. Confirm the position for your specific site with the Attorneys’ Advertising Commission or your ethics counsel before publishing.
What counts as a substantive change to a website?
The Commission decides. As a working instinct, treat anything that changes what a prospective client would understand about your services, results, fees or firm structure as substantive, and anything purely presentational as cosmetic. Note that a redesign which moves or hides a disclosure is not purely presentational.
Do WordPress revisions count as a record of what my site said?
Only partly. Revisions are stored per page, are frequently limited or cleaned up for database performance, and disappear if the page is deleted. If you want to be able to show what a page said on a given date, keep archived copies separately.
Does my marketing agency’s work create exposure for me?
The professional obligations sit with the lawyer, not the vendor. That makes it worth having an arrangement where you are told before substantive changes go live rather than finding out afterwards.
Kentucky attorney advertising rules: the short version
If you take one thing from this guide, take this: in Kentucky, decide who at the firm approves a website change before it goes live, and start keeping dated copies of what your pages say. The rules will tell you what to submit. Only your own process can tell you what changed.
Official source: the Kentucky Bar Association and its Attorneys’ Advertising Commission.
Legal Web Agency is a marketing agency, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. No submission requirement, exemption, fee or deadline is stated here, and none should be inferred. Confirm current requirements with the Attorneys’ Advertising Commission or your ethics counsel.
Related reading: Attorney Advertising Rules by State, plus the Ohio, Tennessee and Missouri guides.
