What we refuse, and the rule we refuse under

Every vendor in this market says they are compliant. This page says what that means in our software, line by line, with the rule beside it — so you can check rather than take our word.

Everything below describes our own software — the rules we identified when building it, what it does to obey them, and where it refuses outright. It is a record of what we built to, not guidance for your practice.1

What the software will not mail

These are refusals, not warnings. The letter is never produced, and the reason is recorded where you can read it — the Not mailed page in your account exists for exactly this.

The software refuses when	Why
The public record shows no mailing address	Nothing is guessed or purchased. Motor-vehicle records are federally restricted for marketing use under the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, and a broker-appended address would make the required how-I-obtained-your-information statement untrue.
The person is a minor	Blocked outright. No waiting period or disclosure cures it.
The jurisdiction's rules are not confirmed by you	Every jurisdiction ships unconfirmed. Nothing mails from it until the subscribing attorney personally marks it verified. This is the default, not a setting we hope you find.
There is no arrest date, or the charge text is missing	The disclosures require both. An incomplete record produces a hold, not a best guess.
Another firm already has that arrest	One arrest produces one letter across every firm we work with, so no arrested person receives two. See exclusivity below.

Florida does not currently mail at all in our software. We have researched the rules but have not had them confirmed by Bar counsel, so Florida is marked researched rather than verified and the gate refuses every Florida letter. Only a subscribing attorney can change that, for their own account. We would rather ship a product that mails nothing than one that mails on our assumption about someone else's license.

What Florida requires in the letter

Our reading of Rule 4-7.18, Rules Regulating The Florida Bar. Researched 29 August 2026; reviewed 8 September 2026. Verify against the current rule.

Our template carries all of the following, and the test suite fails if any of them goes missing:

On the envelope and every enclosure

The word ADVERTISEMENT, on the face of the envelope — not only inside the letter.

In the body

Your background, training and experience, in your own words. Your bona fide office location. A statement of how the information was obtained. And a limits-of-knowledge statement naming what we actually know: the recipient's name, contact details, arrest date and the charge listed in the public record — and nothing else.

Filing

Rule 4-7.19 requires each advertisement to be filed with the Bar — $250 if timely, $750 if late, and our reading is that this is per template rather than per mailing. Any wording change to a template means a new filing before it is used, which is why we do not let template text be edited casually.

There is no thirty-day waiting period for criminal matters. The thirty-day restriction in Rule 4-7.18(b)(1)(A) applies to communications concerning personal injury, wrongful death, and accident or disaster. Our reading is that it does not reach criminal defense, which is why letters can go out the morning after a booking. This is one of the questions we have put to Bar counsel in writing, and we will publish the answer here.

Exclusivity, and why it is a compliance matter

One firm in a county receives the DUI letters; another receives drug possession; a third domestic violence. One arrest produces one letter across every firm we work with, decided by the lead charge and enforced before anything is printed.

This is usually described as a commercial promise, but the reason it exists is simpler. A person arrested on a Friday night who receives four nearly identical solicitation letters on the same morning has been treated badly, and every firm that sent one looks worse for it.

What we have not confirmed

These are open questions we have put in writing to The Florida Bar's Ethics and Advertising Department. We publish them because a company that only lists what it is sure of is telling you half of what it knows.

Whether any waiting period applies to criminal solicitation. Our reading is that the thirty-day rule is personal-injury only. We have asked for that to be confirmed.
Whether a window envelope can satisfy the envelope marking. Standard mail-vendor envelopes cannot be pre-printed, and a custom envelope carries cost and lead time. Until this is settled, Florida service mail is refused and firms print their own.
Whether our intended disclosures are complete. We have listed exactly what the template contains and asked whether anything is missing.
How the source of the information should be described. We have proposed our wording and asked whether it suffices.
What triggers a new filing. Whether a change of envelope, or of contact details, or a logo — with no change to the substantive text — makes it a new advertisement.
What diligence is expected regarding represented persons. Booking records do not reliably show whether someone has already retained counsel or been appointed a public defender.
Whether a client's identity may be confirmed to a vendor. We would like to measure how many recipients became clients. We have asked whether that is permissible at all, and whether an aggregate count without names would be.
Whether Bar-member access to a restricted records portal may be used this way, and whether a software provider may operate it under supervision.

We will publish the answers here as they arrive, including any that go against us. If an answer means a feature has to change or be withdrawn, that will be said on this page.

Where our data comes from

Publicly published county booking rosters, read on the terms the publishing agency sets. We review each county's robots.txt and terms of use before a source is enabled, and a county whose terms prohibit redistributing the data is not used — we have already ruled counties out on that basis alone.

We do not buy address data from brokers, and we do not use motor-vehicle records. If a roster does not publish a mailing address, that person is not written to.

Note

¹ First Appearance is a software company, not a law firm, and no one here is a member of The Florida Bar. This page records the rules we identified and built the program to obey, and our reading of them on the dates shown. It is not legal advice, it is not a legal opinion, and it must not be relied on in place of your own judgment or your own counsel's. Rules are amended; check the current text. Responsibility for your firm's advertising compliance is yours and cannot be delegated to a vendor — which is why the software refuses to mail from any jurisdiction until you have personally confirmed its rules, rather than accepting ours.