A letter, a free consultation and a sanction.

On 24 March 2021, a lawyer in Fribourg sent personal letters to tenants of several property management firms. He was acting for a tenant and, in his view, those firms had not stated the previous rent on the official form handed over when a lease is signed. The letters explained what that could mean, mentioned the possibility of reclaiming up to ten years of overpaid rent and offered a free first consultation of about 45 minutes.

Six days later, on 30 March, a complaint followed. The commission that supervises lawyers in the canton of Fribourg issued him a warning on 15 May 2023. The cantonal court upheld it on 19 March 2024. On 14 January 2025, the Federal Supreme Court dismissed his appeal in judgment 2C_236/2024 and ordered him to pay CHF 2,000 in costs.

The mildest sanction. But a sanction.

The federal Lawyers Act provides five disciplinary measures, from lightest to heaviest: a warning, a reprimand, a fine of up to CHF 20,000, a temporary ban on practising for up to two years and a permanent ban. This case got the first one, which is removed from the register after five years. But it came after almost four years of proceedings and three levels of review.

For a firm, the real cost is not the warning. It is the time, the uncertainty and the fact that a decision about how it looks for clients is discussed in public.

What the court said.

Article 12(d) of the Act allows lawyers to advertise as long as the advertising stays objective and meets the public’s need for information. What weighed in this case was the form. According to the court, individual, direct advertising aimed at specific people breaches the objectivity requirement when it works as sales promotion or is sent without the recipient’s consent.

Read from the outside, the message is clear. Nobody disputed that a lawyer may explain a right. What was at issue was going out to find people, one by one, with a free offer to make the first step easy.

The Swiss rule does not stop lawyers from making themselves known. They can have a website, publish articles, give talks or appear in directories. What it asks is that advertising informs those who need it and does not press those who have not asked.

Why it matters for a website.

A website is not a letter. Nobody receives it without asking: clients reach it because they are searching. An objective website that explains what the firm does, who does it and what it costs to start is far from what the court judged.

But a website no longer works alone. A firm that buys contact lists and sends personalised emails, that messages executives of struggling companies, or that follows people with ads after they read a page about dismissals is closer to the Fribourg letter than to a brochure. Automation makes it cheap. It does not make it right. Before launching anything like that, it is worth assessing it with the supervisory authority.

Free consultations deserve a separate thought. At Orvalle, the law firm concept I designed for this sector, the first consultation is booked and paid for. Not because the court requires that of a website, but because a paid consultation with its price on display says something else: that the lawyer’s time has value and that clients know from the start what they will pay.

And in Spain.

In Spain, the General Statute of the Spanish Legal Profession declares advertising free in Article 19, within the limits listed in Article 20. It may not disclose facts covered by professional secrecy, encourage litigation, offer services to victims of accidents or misfortunes in circumstances that condition their choice, and never before 45 days have passed, promise results that do not depend solely on the lawyer, or refer to clients without their consent. The Code of Conduct adds, in Article 6, that advertising must be objective, truthful and dignified, and must state the bar association the lawyer belongs to.

On paper, the Spanish rule looks more open. But the underlying idea is similar: a lawyer’s advertising informs those who are searching. It does not press those who have not asked.

The 45-day limit follows a logic close to Fribourg’s: to protect people going through a hard time from an offer they did not ask for, arriving when they are least able to compare it with others.

What I would do with the website.

• Inform, do not solicit. Explain which matters the firm handles and how it works, without lines that push people to litigate.
• Price on display. If the first consultation is paid, say how much and what it includes. If it is free, do not make it the headline.
• No promised results. No success rates and no amounts recovered used as bait.
• Bar association or register, visible. In Spain, each lawyer’s bar association. In Switzerland, the cantonal register they are listed in.
• Care with outbound messages. Emails, messages and ads aimed at specific people are the part worth reviewing with your bar association or supervisory authority before launch.

One paradox remains, and it deserves an afternoon. If a free consultation can end in a sanction, why is it still so tempting to make it the headline? Perhaps because it is the only thing a website knows how to offer before it knows the client. And perhaps that is the real question: what does your firm’s website offer someone who has not paid you anything yet?

What is permitted in each case is for your bar or your supervisory authority to decide, not a designer. What I can do is design a website that does not need to go near that line to work. That is how the Orvalle concept is built, and that is how the Strategic Diagnostic begins.