Texas Law Shield, LLC sells legal-services membership contracts to firearm owners, authorized under Chapter 953 of the Texas Occupations Code. An employer of three healthcare-training-school employees (Juan Manel Perez, Katie Kassab, and Bianca Arguello) invited Law Shield to give a safety-and-advertising presentation alongside an active-shooter training session. The three employees, who attended the training, later sued Law Shield and associated law firms for civil barratry under Texas Government Code Section 82.0651(c), alleging the presentation was an improper in-person solicitation of legal services.
The 334th District Court of Harris County granted summary judgment for Law Shield and the other defendants and dismissed the employees' claims. The Fourteenth Court of Appeals reversed and remanded in a memorandum opinion, holding that a fact issue existed as to whether Law Shield knew or reasonably should have known the employees needed its firearm-related legal services because of the active-shooter subject matter of the training -- without requiring proof the employees had an actual, existing legal need. The court of appeals denied both panel rehearing and en banc reconsideration. The Supreme Court granted Law Shield's petition for review, with oral argument set for February 10, 2027.
Petitioners (Texas Law Shield, LLC, et al.): The court of appeals' decision effectively creates strict liability for any in-person advertising, regardless of whether the audience has any actual need for legal services, and conflicts with the Fourteenth Court's own prior decision in Crowley II, which evaluated solicitation from the barratry plaintiff's perspective rather than the lawyer's. This also disregards this Court's 2022 amendments to Disciplinary Rules 7.01(b) and 7.03, which were adopted specifically to clarify the line between permissible in-person advertising and prohibited solicitation. Because the employees never showed they personally had an existing or imminent firearms-related legal need, they suffered no concrete injury and lack constitutional standing to recover under the barratry statute, regardless of the merits of the solicitation question.
Respondents (Juan Manel Perez, Katie Kassab, and Bianca Arguello): The court of appeals faithfully applied Disciplinary Rules 7.01 and 7.03's actual text, which asks whether the lawyer/advertiser knew or reasonably should have known the audience needed legal services in a particular matter -- not whether that need objectively existed -- because the rules regulate the solicitor's own conduct and knowledge. Testimony that Law Shield's own representative believed active-shooter-training attendees need its firearm-related services created a fact issue precluding summary judgment. Section 38.01 defines solicitation disjunctively to include communications arising from a "particular occurrence or event" (here, the active-shooter training itself), not just an existing legal problem, and the statute confers standing on exactly the people the Legislature meant to protect from unlawful solicitation.
Yes. The petition argues the Fourteenth Court has inconsistently applied its own solicitation standard (contrasting Crowley II with the panel's opinion here), that the decision disregards this Court's own 2022 amendments to the Disciplinary Rules governing attorney advertising, and that it conflicts with the Court's constitutional-standing jurisprudence, including Farmers Texas County Mutual Insurance Co. v. Beasley.
legal-ethics, civil-procedure
Petition for Review (Tex. R. App. P. 53.1); granted; set for oral argument February 10, 2027. Not yet decided.
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