CAN-SPAM compliance for attorney outreach

1. Don't lie in headers. The From, To, Reply-To, and routing information must accurately identify the person or business sending the email. No spoofed domains.
2. Don't use deceptive subject lines. The subject must reasonably reflect the content of the message. "Re: our call yesterday" when there was no call is a violation.
3. Identify the message as an ad if it's commercial. The disclosure can be brief and doesn't need to live in the subject line.
4. Include a valid physical postal address. A current street address, a P.O. box registered with the USPS, or a private mailbox registered with a commercial mail receiving agency all qualify.
5. Provide a clear opt-out mechanism. Plain, conspicuous, functional for at least 30 days after sending. A reply-to that goes to a monitored inbox counts; a buried link does not.
6. Honor opt-outs within 10 business days. No login wall, no asking for a reason, no charging a fee.
7. You're on the hook even if you hire a vendor. Both the company whose product is promoted and the company sending the email can be liable. Read your ESP's terms.

State bar directories are public records. Lawyers publish their business contact information specifically so other professionals can reach them. The California, Florida, Georgia, and Texas bars all permit downloading or searching the directory for B2B purposes, and none require attorney consent before a commercial sender contacts them at their published address.

That said, a few bars restrict bulk commercial use of the directory itself. The fix is straightforward: don't republish the bar's directory. Send your own outreach to the addresses, and don't redistribute the source list as a product. BarSourced handles the licensing question by sourcing, verifying, and reselling cleaned, deduplicated, value-added records - not the raw bar export.

• From-name is a real person at your company, not "Marketing Team"
• Reply-to lands in a monitored inbox
• Subject line summarizes the offer truthfully and avoids "Re:" / "Fwd:" tricks
• Body identifies your company and (where relevant) discloses commercial intent
• Footer: physical address + one-click unsubscribe link
• SPF, DKIM, and DMARC pass on your sending domain
• Suppression list is wired into your ESP - opt-outs propagate within 24 hours, not 10 days
• You can produce, on demand, the source of every address you mailed

CAN-SPAM only governs email. If you call or text the same attorney, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act applies - different consent regime, different penalties. Several states (notably California, Virginia, Colorado, and Connecticut) have layered privacy statutes that grant additional rights to recipients. Treat opt-outs as universal: if a lawyer asks off your list, remove them from email, calls, and texts.

Pull a clean, source-of-record attorney email list and start your outreach with the deliverability floor already in your favor.