“Solicitation” or “solicit” denotes a communication initiated by or on behalf of a lawyer or law firm that is directed to a specific person the lawyer knows or reasonably should know needs legal services in a particular matter and that offers to provide, or reasonably can be understood as offering to provide, legal services for that matter.
A lawyer shall not solicit professional employment by live person-to-person contact when a significant motive for the lawyer’s doing so is the lawyer’s or law firm’s pecuniary gain, unless the contact is with a:
lawyer;
person who has a family, close personal, or prior business or professional relationship with the lawyer or law firm; or
person who routinely uses for business purposes the type of legal services offered by the lawyer.
A lawyer shall not solicit professional employment even when not otherwise prohibited by paragraph (b), if:
the target of the solicitation has made known to the lawyer a desire not to be solicited by the lawyer; or
the solicitation involves coercion, duress or harassment.
This Rule does not prohibit communications authorized by law or ordered by a court or other tribunal.
Notwithstanding the prohibitions in this Rule, a lawyer may participate with a prepaid or group legal service plan operated by an organization not owned or directed by the lawyer that uses live person-to-person contact to enroll members or sell subscriptions for the plan from persons who are not known to need legal services in a particular matter covered by the plan.