What an Ohio Attorney Can and Can't Do When Contacting Crash Victims

There’s a widely repeated claim that Ohio attorneys are barred from contacting accident victims for 30 days after a crash. It isn’t accurate, and getting it wrong in either direction is costly — believing the ban exists leaves referrals on the table, and assuming there are no rules at all invites a grievance.

Here’s what the Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct actually require.

There is no 30-day ban. There is a 30-day disclosure.

Some states impose a hard blackout period on attorney solicitation of accident victims. Ohio took a different approach.

Under Ohio Prof. Cond. R. 7.3, a written, recorded, or electronic communication sent to a personal-injury or wrongful-death prospect within 30 days of the accident must include a mandatory disclosure titled “Understanding Your Rights” — a nine-topic checklist covering evidence preservation, avoiding premature statements, insurer conflicts, claim deadlines, getting settlement terms in writing, the value of consulting counsel, verifying credentials, and discussing fees.

The disclosure closes by stating that the Supreme Court of Ohio “neither promotes nor prohibits the direct solicitation of personal injury victims.” That sentence is the whole answer: the Court regulates how, not whether.

What Rule 7.3 does prohibit

The real prohibition is about channel, not timing. Rule 7.3(a) bars soliciting professional employment by:

In-person contact
Live telephone contact
Real-time electronic contact

…when a significant motive is the lawyer’s pecuniary gain. Exceptions exist for other lawyers, family, close personal friends, and prior professional relationships.

Where does texting fall?

“Real-time electronic contact” is generally understood to mean live chat, instant messaging, and video — exchanges the recipient is pulled into. The ABA’s commentary to Rule 7.3 reasons that text messages are not live person-to-person contact precisely because a recipient can simply disregard them, and the trend is to treat texts like email and other written communications.

That places SMS in the permitted-with-conditions bucket rather than the prohibited bucket — but it’s an interpretive line, not a bright one, and worth confirming with counsel before you build a program on it.

The other requirements that come with written solicitation

“ADVERTISING MATERIAL” labeling on targeted written solicitations
No solicitation of someone who has made known they don’t want to be solicited
No coercion, duress, or harassment
All of Rule 7.1’s truthfulness requirements still apply

R.C. 1349.05 does not apply to you

Ohio’s statute capping outreach to crash victims — R.C. § 1349.05, with its 24-hour hold and one-text-total limit — is titled “Solicitation of employment by health care practitioner.” It reaches practitioners and those paid to solicit on their behalf. It does not reach lawyers.

This is the mirror image of the common misconception: the statutory caps people assume bind attorneys actually bind chiropractors, and the ethics rules people assume bind chiropractors actually bind attorneys.

The federal rules apply to law firms too

Nothing in the Rules of Professional Conduct exempts a law firm from the TCPA.

Autodialed or prerecorded marketing calls and texts require prior express written consent under § 227(b). Manually sent messages are not autodialed after Facebook v. Duguid.
The National Do Not Call Registry applies regardless of how the message is sent, at $500–$1,500 per message. The Seventh Circuit held in July 2026 that texts aren’t “calls” for the DNC private right of action; the Ninth Circuit disagreed six months earlier. The Sixth Circuit hasn’t ruled, so Ohio firms should assume exposure.
47 CFR § 64.1200(d) requires a written internal do-not-call policy, sender identification, and honoring opt-outs within 10 days — for any telemarketing contact, manual included.
Quiet hours: 8 a.m.–9 p.m. recipient-local.

The part that ends careers: paying for referrals

Rule 7.2 permits a lawyer to pay the reasonable costs of advertising. It does not permit paying someone for recommending the lawyer’s services. Rule 5.4 protects professional independence, and Rule 1.5(e) governs division of fees.

The failure mode isn’t usually a lawyer writing a check for a case. It’s an arrangement that looks like marketing and functions like a referral fee:

Paying a clinic, vendor, or lead service per signed client, per case, or as a share of recovery
Paying a flat fee that is nominally for “marketing” but is sized and renegotiated based on case volume
Using a third party to make the in-person or live-phone contact that Rule 7.3 forbids you from making yourself — the runner problem. You cannot hire around a rule that binds you.

A genuine flat fee for defined marketing deliverables, unrelated to outcomes and unchanged by volume, is the defensible structure. If a clinic is handing your card to patients and you’re paying for that placement, look hard at whether you’re buying advertising or buying a recommendation — and read Ohio Advisory Opinion 2017-03 on lawyer participation in for-profit referral and marketing arrangements before signing.

The practical summary

✅ What you can do

Send targeted written, recorded, or electronic solicitations to accident victims, including in the first 30 days
Include the “Understanding Your Rights” disclosure when sending within 30 days of the accident
Label targeted written solicitations “ADVERTISING MATERIAL”
Pay the reasonable costs of genuine advertising
Accept clients who contact you first, through any channel

❌ What you can’t do

Solicit by in-person, live telephone, or real-time electronic contact
Omit the 30-day disclosure on a qualifying communication
Contact someone who has said they don’t want to be contacted
Text a number on the National DNC Registry, or send without an internal DNC policy and sender identification
Pay per client, per case, or per referral — under any label
Use a marketer, clinic, or “runner” to make contact you’re barred from making yourself

Where the data fits

Ohio crash reports are public records. The compliance question is never whether you may have the data — it’s what you do on the way out.

Gameplan Network supplies Ohio crash data across all 88 counties with DNC scrubbing and contact enrichment, so your intake decisions start from an accurate picture of who is contactable and how. The solicitation itself stays where the Rules put it: with the lawyer.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice, nor a substitute for reading the Rules and current advisory opinions yourself. Whether SMS constitutes “real-time electronic contact” is an interpretive question, and the federal circuit split on texts and the DNC registry is unresolved. Information reflects our understanding as of July 2026.

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