When an Attorney Leaves: Bios, Profiles and AI Answers

When an attorney leaves a firm, nothing online changes by itself: the old bio, the directory profiles and the Business Profile keep describing the old arrangement until someone edits each one. For a law firm that is more than an AI visibility problem, because a page implying a lawyer is still with the firm can be a misleading communication under the bar rules. We have not measured how assistants resolve two conflicting employers for one lawyer; the safe course is to leave them nothing to resolve.

Why a stale bio is a rules question

The ABA's comment to Rule 7.1 says a firm name or designation is misleading if it implies a connection "with a lawyer not associated with the firm or a predecessor firm." California's Rule 7.5(c) puts the duty on the individual too: a lawyer "shall not state or imply that the lawyer practices in or has a professional relationship with a law firm or other organization unless that is the fact." Texas Rule 7.01(f) says a lawyer may imply practicing in a partnership or other entity "only when that is accurate."

Read together, those rules cut both ways. The firm should not keep advertising a lawyer who has gone, and the lawyer should not keep a profile that still names the old firm.

Clients come before pages

The order of work matters. ABA Formal Opinion 489 (December 4, 2019) says firm notice requirements "cannot be so rigid that they restrict or interfere with a client's choice of counsel," and that departing lawyers and firms share obligations to make the transition of client matters orderly. Settle who represents whom first. A bio change published before clients have been told is a poor way for them to find out.

Of counsel is a public claim as well

Partners often step back into an of counsel role instead of leaving. ABA Formal Opinion 90-357 says the title is proper where the relationship with the firm is "a close, regular, personal relationship." It declines to set a fixed limit on how many firms a lawyer can be of counsel to, but says there is a point where there are too many for the relationships to stay close and regular, and that the lawyer is "associated" with each firm for conflict purposes. So "of counsel" on a bio should describe something current. A retired founder who has not worked a matter in years is history, and belongs in the firm's story, not on its attorney list.

Where the old arrangement survives

On the firm's own site

The bio page, practice pages that name the lawyer as the contact, blog posts with an author box, press releases, the team photo caption, and any structured data naming the lawyer as an employee.

On profiles either side controls

The lawyer's Google Business Profile, the firm's profile if it lists staff, Justia, Avvo, the bar's own member record and LinkedIn. Google's practitioner guidelines tie a practitioner profile to a location where the person can actually be reached, which an old office no longer is.

On pages nobody controls

News coverage, court opinions listing counsel, conference programs. These stay, and they are accurate history. They only mislead when nothing current contradicts them.

A departure checklist for both sides

Firm: take the bio down or replace it with a short note, remove the lawyer from office pages and markup, reassign practice page contacts, and update the firm's directory listings.
Firm: do not redirect the departed lawyer's bio to another lawyer's page, which implies a relationship neither has.
Lawyer: update the bar record address, every directory profile and the Business Profile, and publish a new bio that names the prior firm as history with dates.
Both: ask the same few questions about the lawyer in two or three assistants before and after, and keep the dated answers.
Of counsel: review the title once a year against how the relationship actually works.

Keeping the firm and its people distinct in the first place is covered in firm, attorney, or both, and the full cluster is on the AI visibility for law firms hub.

Not legal or ethics advice. This describes how AI systems can read a law firm in public; your state bar's rules and your own ethics counsel decide what you may publish.

Questions

Can a law firm keep a departed lawyer's bio on its website?

A law firm that keeps a departed lawyer's bio live risks implying a connection that no longer exists, which the comment to ABA Model Rule 7.1 treats as misleading when a firm name or communication suggests a link with a lawyer not associated with the firm. Replacing the bio with the firm's current attorney list, and updating directory profiles, keeps the public record accurate.

What does of counsel mean for how a firm describes a lawyer?

ABA Formal Opinion 90-357 says calling a lawyer of counsel is proper only where the relationship with the firm is close, regular and personal. A firm that lists a lawyer as of counsel online is making that claim publicly, so the title on the site and on directory profiles should reflect a real, continuing relationship, not a past one.

What happens to AI answers about a firm when an attorney leaves or becomes of counsel?