An advocate needs to be found by the person who needs them. The rules of the profession forbid almost every method a marketing agency would reach for.

That is the whole problem, and most agencies solve it by pretending it is not there. They deliver testimonials, a “best lawyer in Varanasi” heading, star ratings in the search result and a line about winning cases. Then they invoice and move on. The advocate is the one who faces the complaint, because the duty is theirs and not the agency’s.

Here is what the rules permit, what they forbid, and what still brings in work.

What Rule 36 actually says

Rule 36 sits in Chapter II, Part VI of the Bar Council of India Rules, under the standards of professional conduct and etiquette made in the Advocates Act, 1961. It bars an advocate from soliciting work or advertising, whether directly or indirectly.

The rule names the methods: circulars, advertisements, touts, personal communications, interviews not warranted by personal relations, and furnishing or inspiring newspaper comment. It also bars an advocate’s name, sign-board or stationery from carrying anything that suggests they are or have been connected with a particular office, or that they specialise in a particular kind of work.

Break it and the consequence is not a takedown notice. It is professional misconduct under section 35 of the Advocates Act, 1961, which is a matter for the disciplinary committee of the State Bar Council.

What the 2008 amendment lets you publish

The rule predates the internet, and for a while it was unclear whether an advocate could have a website at all. In 2008, following directions from the Supreme Court, the Bar Council of India resolved to permit one — with an approved list of what it may contain.

An advocate’s website may carry:

  • name
  • address
  • telephone numbers
  • email address
  • enrolment number and date of enrolment
  • the State Bar Council they originally enrolled with
  • the State Bar Council on whose roll they now are
  • the Bar Association they are a member of
  • professional and academic qualifications
  • areas of practice

That is the list. The information is furnished under intimation to the Bar Council, and the position taken is that anything beyond the approved particulars is a breach of Rule 36 — which returns you to section 35.

Read that list again and notice what is missing. There is no line for achievements. No line for clients. No line for outcomes.

What that rules out

Everything a marketer normally reaches for:

  • Testimonials and client names. Both are third parties vouching for you, which is the definition of the thing the rule prohibits.
  • Superlatives. “Best advocate in Varanasi”, “top criminal lawyer”, “leading firm”. Comparative claims are advertising in the plainest sense.
  • Case results. Win counts, settlement figures, “1,000+ cases won”. Also the closest thing to promising an outcome, which no advocate may do.
  • Star ratings in the search result. Review structured data puts stars beside your listing. That is a third-party endorsement rendered by Google, and it is not on the approved list.
  • Urgency and offers. Countdown timers, limited slots, discounts. Legal help is not a sale.
  • Influencers and celebrity endorsement. More on this below — it is the thing the Bar Council moved on most recently.
  • Paid listings and lead-generation portals. Also below, and also more urgent than most people realise.

The rules got tighter, not looser

If you were told a few years ago that enforcement was theoretical, that is out of date.

In the P.N. Vignesh matter, a division bench of the Madras High Court held that online portals selling legal services at fixed prices breached Rules 36 and 37, and directed the Bar Council to take disciplinary action against advocates soliciting through them. The court’s reasoning went further than paid ads: any structure that channels clients toward particular advocates — including one that does it by algorithm, filtering by practice area and availability — is indirect solicitation.

JustDial took that to the Supreme Court. On 14 August 2024, in JustDial Ltd v. P.N. Vignesh, the court declined to stay the High Court’s directions and sought the Bar Council’s response on whether online portals may publish advocates’ advertisements at all.

Then, on 17 March 2025, the Bar Council of India issued a press release on what it called a rise in unethical advertising and self-styled legal influencers. It directed State Bar Councils to have offending advertisements withdrawn, banned the use of celebrities and influencers to promote legal services, required promotional banners and videos to come down, and told them to begin disciplinary proceedings.

The practical reading for an advocate with a website: the safe position is narrower than it was, and the direction of travel is one way.

What still brings in work

Now the useful part. Within those limits, a website can still be the reason somebody calls you — because the constraint removes persuasion, not information.

Nobody searches for “legal services”. They search for the exact thing they need. Filing an RTI. Getting a rent agreement drawn. Settling a court challan. A bail application. A single “Practice Areas” page listing thirty items cannot rank for any of them, because it is not really about any of them.

Split the practice into individually named services, one page each, and each page can answer the question the searcher actually typed. Areas of practice are on the approved list. Describing them precisely is not advertising; it is the thing the list exists to allow.

Say where you practise. Court and jurisdiction are ordinary facts and they are the strongest filter there is. Somebody in Chandauli looking for help at the Varanasi District Court needs to know you are there.

Say what the process involves. What documents are needed, what the stages are, how long each usually takes. This is information, not solicitation, and it is what a worried person is reading for at eleven at night.

Let the page be findable. Clear headings, plain language, a working contact route, a site that loads on a mid-range phone. None of that is advertising. It is competence, and it is most of the gap between an invisible practice and a found one.

Can you publish your fees?

This is the question we are asked most, and the honest answer is that the approved list does not mention fees.

The Madras High Court’s objection in Vignesh was to portals selling legal services at fixed prices, which is not the same as an advocate stating their own charges on their own site. But the approved particulars are stated as exhaustive, and fees are not among them.

So the cautious position — the one we would take unless a State Bar Council says otherwise — is to describe the scope of a service on the page and give the fee on enquiry. You lose a little qualification at the top of the funnel. You do not lose your enrolment.

If your Bar Council’s view differs, follow it. That is a question for them and not for us.

What we learned building one

Vakil Prime is an advocate practising at the Varanasi District Court, taking work from six districts — Varanasi, Chandauli, Mirzapur, Ghazipur, Jaunpur and Bhadohi.

The site we replaced was a single page that said, in effect, “we do legal work”. That is a business card. It was invisible to every person actually looking for help.

We mapped the practice into seventeen named services across three groups: litigation and quick remedies, documentation and registrations, and business compliance. Each was chosen where genuine search demand met work the practice could turn around quickly. Then we wrote them, because an advocate has better things to do than draft web copy, and a page written by somebody who has not understood the service reads exactly like it.

The site is informational throughout. No page implies a result. The visitor confirms they approached it of their own accord before going further — a small thing, and the kind of thing that matters if anyone ever asks.

The hard part was never the code. It was writing seventeen pages that had to be found, be clear and convert, without a word of persuasion in any of them.

The part nobody thinks about: the enquiry form

An advocate’s contact form collects some of the most sensitive personal data any Indian business handles. Not just a name and a number — the outline of somebody’s dispute, their family situation, sometimes a criminal matter.

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, that makes the practice a Data Fiduciary, with duties that bite in full from May 2027: notice at the point of collection, a retention period you actually keep to, a route for someone to have their data deleted, and a named contact for complaints. Professional privilege covers what you do with a client’s confidence. It does not cover a form submission sitting in a shared inbox for six years.

We have written separately on building websites and software to the DPDP Act, and the duties are the same for a chamber as for a company.

What we will not do

We will not put testimonials, case results, superlatives or review markup on an advocate’s website, and we will say no if asked. Not because we are cautious by temperament, but because the consequence lands on you and not on us.

We will also tell you plainly when a question is for your Bar Council rather than for a developer. There are more of those on this kind of project than on any other we take, and an agency that never hits one has not understood the brief.

The short version

The rules permit a narrow, factual website. Within that, you can still be the practice somebody finds at the moment they need one — by naming your services precisely, saying where you practise, explaining what a process involves, and building something that loads and works.

You cannot buy attention. You can be findable, and clear, and correct. In this profession that turns out to be enough, and it is a good deal more than most practices currently have.

If you are briefing anyone on a website — in law or any regulated trade — the questions in how to choose a web developer apply, and the first one about who owns your domain applies double when your professional reputation is attached to it.