Attorney outreach glossary
Plain-English definitions for the terms that come up when you build, verify, and send to an attorney email list - legal terms, deliverability terms, and bar-directory terms.
- CAN-SPAM Act
- The 2003 US federal law that governs commercial email. Requires accurate sender identification, non-deceptive subject lines, a physical postal address, and a working unsubscribe mechanism honored within 10 business days.
- TCPA
- The Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Governs SMS and automated calls, not email, but matters if you call phone numbers from any attorney list. Prior express consent is required for marketing SMS.
- SMTP verification
- Connecting to the recipient's mail server and confirming the address is deliverable without sending an actual email. Catches typos, dead mailboxes, and (sometimes) catch-all domains.
- Catch-all domain
- A domain whose mail server accepts mail for any local-part, even nonexistent ones. SMTP verification cannot prove a specific catch-all address is real, so these are usually flagged and excluded.
- Role inbox
- A shared mailbox like info@, admin@, contact@, or office@. Role addresses violate most email-platform terms and have terrible reply rates. Always excluded from our deliverable rows.
- Soft bounce
- A temporary delivery failure: full mailbox, server timeout, greylisting. Retried automatically by most sending platforms. Repeated soft bounces eventually become hard bounces.
- Hard bounce
- A permanent delivery failure: address does not exist or domain rejects all mail. Hard-bounced addresses are removed from the catalog at the next refresh.
- Sender reputation
- A score mailbox providers assign to your sending domain and IP, based on bounce rate, spam complaints, engagement, and authentication. Bad reputation routes you to spam regardless of list quality.
- SPF
- Sender Policy Framework. A DNS record that lists which servers may send mail on behalf of your domain. Required for inbox placement at Gmail, Microsoft, and Yahoo.
- DKIM
- DomainKeys Identified Mail. Cryptographic signature added to outbound messages that proves the message was sent by an authorized server and was not modified in transit.
- DMARC
- Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. Tells receivers what to do when SPF or DKIM fail and where to report it. Required by Google and Yahoo for bulk senders since 2024.
- Bar association
- A professional organization for attorneys. The mandatory ones in California, Florida, and Texas are integrated bars where membership is required to practice. Others (like the ABA) are voluntary.
- State bar directory
- Each integrated state bar's public attorney lookup. The source of record for who is licensed, in what status, since when, and (often) what they publish as a business email address.
- IOLTA
- Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts. Pooled trust accounts every state requires for client funds held briefly. Comes up in vendor pitches around trust accounting software and compliance tools.
- Of counsel
- A formal but non-partner, non-associate relationship between an attorney and a firm. Useful as a filter when you want decision-makers rather than affiliated practitioners.
- JD
- Juris Doctor: the US law degree. Holding a JD does not make someone a licensed attorney; bar admission does.
- Contingency fee
- A fee structure where the attorney is paid a percentage of the recovery rather than an hourly rate. Dominant in personal injury, employment plaintiffs' work, and mass torts.
- Solo practitioner
- A licensed attorney practicing without partners or associates. Solos are the largest single firm category in every state we cover.
- Partner
- An equity or non-equity owner of a law firm. Decision-maker for most vendor purchases at firms above about ten attorneys.
- Managing partner
- The partner with day-to-day operational authority. The right contact for firmwide software, payroll, insurance, and office-services pitches.
- Practice area
- The legal subject matter an attorney focuses on (personal injury, criminal defense, family law, etc.). State bars publish self-reported areas; cross-tagging is common.
- Active status
- An attorney in active bar status is currently authorized to practice. Inactive, retired, and suspended attorneys are excluded from the deliverable catalog.
- List rental
- Renting access to a third-party list for a single send. Usually opaque about source, age, and verification, which is why a bar-sourced, owned list outperforms rented lists in every test.
- Sending domain warmup
- Gradually ramping send volume on a new domain or IP so mailbox providers learn your reputation before you hit them with a full campaign. Skipping warmup is the most common cause of avoidable spam routing.