Is adverising with lawyer rankings lawful?

[Marcel Pemsel]

Is adverising with lawyer rankings lawful?

Marcel Pemsel Wednesday, August 19, 2026 - German Supreme Court, I ZR 130/25, Marcel Pemsel, physician ranking, unfair competition

If you are a lawyer, chances are you have at some point submitted a form with publishable and confidential matters you have handled to a legal directory, invited colleagues and clients to recommend you, recommended colleagues yourself or proudly displayed a badge of the legal directory that ranked you on your firm's website or in your email signature. The recent decision Top-Mediziner of the German Supreme Court ("GSC", case I ZR 130/25) may call into question the lawfulness of using these rankings and awards in advertising.

Background

The defendant publishes a health magazine called "Focus Gesundheit" (meaning "Focus Health"), which contains annual doctor lists. The lists rank physicians across various specialisations based on criteria including peer recommendations, self-assessments by the doctors, patient reviews and other factors such as qualifications, memberships in professional associations and publications. The relevant factors are explained on the defendant's website.

Physicians who are ranked may use one of the following logos for their marketing materials, which display their ranking as a "Top Physician" or a "Recommendation":

Of course, the use is subject to an annual licence fee to be paid to the defendant.

The Wettbewerbszentrale (a German private association for the protection of fair competition) brought proceedings against the defendant arguing that the logos are misleading, not transparent and constitute unlawful comparative advertising. The District Court of Munich I agreed. The Higher Regional Court of Munich disagreed, holding that the logos were not misleading because the underlying methodology was sufficiently objective and the public understood that physician rankings are inherently subjective. Wettbewerbszentrale filed an appeal to the GSC.

The German Supreme Court’s decision

The judges overturned the Higher Regional Court and remanded the case.

The plaintiff's claims were based on the German implementation of the Unfair Business-to-Consumer Commercial Practices Directive ("UCPD"), in particular the prohibition of misleading actions in Art. 6 and misleading omissions in Art. 7.

1. The GSC has developed the following conditions that must be met to use test results in a non-misleading way in advertising:

(1) The test results must be up-to-date, i.e. they are from the latest test by the testing organization;
(2) The advertised product is identical to the one that has been tested;
(3) The advertised product is not technically obsolete;
(4) The testing methods are trustworthy;
(5) The advertiser had no undue influence on the test result;
(6) There are no special circumstances, which render using the test logo unlawful, e.g. the test has not applied objective criteria.

The Court combined these conditions with the standard it applies to health-related advertising. According to the GSC’s case law, particularly stringent requirements must be applied to the accuracy, clarity and unambiguity of health-related advertising claims in light of the paramount importance of health protection. This strict standard applies not only to how the advertiser uses the test logo but also to the test itself, in particular whether the testing methods are trustworthy.

The requirement of accuracy, clarity and unambiguity in health-related advertising demands that limitations or reservations resulting from the testing procedure concerning the message conveyed by the test logo must be clearly apparent from the logo itself. In the context of medicinal advertising law, claims relating to the scientific substantiation of an asserted effect must accurately reflect any limitations identified in the underlying study; otherwise, there is a risk of misleading consumers as to the degree of scientific substantiation. By analogy, the judges found, a test logo is misleading if it conveys a comprehensive health-related message while failing to communicate clearly limitations affecting the evidential value of the test arising from the underlying methodology.

The judges criticized the lower court for not sufficiently assessing whether the defendant’s test procedure complied with these strict standards. The Higher Regional Court had not sufficiently examined the scoring methodology - for instance, why a previous “Top Physician” award was itself sufficient for inclusion in the research pool, what criteria governed the pre-scoring, and how the weighting of different factors worked. Furthermore, the logos themselves were deemed potentially misleading because they do not disclose the significant influence of subjective assessments from peers, the doctors themselves and patients. Even if consumers expect some subjectivity in physician rankings, the strict health-advertising standard requires clarity about whose subjective views are at play.

2. The judges held that the offering of the logos to physicians listed in the ranking constituted a commercial practice within the meaning of Art. 2(d) UCPD. Editorial content by a press undertaking is generally not considered a commercial practice, if the aim is to improve or maintain a competitive position vis-à-vis other press undertakings. However, the plaintiff did not object to the publication of the rankings as part of the editorial content of the defendant but to the commercial offering of the logos to physicians listed in the ranking. This supports the promotion of the ranked physicians and constitutes a commercial practice. This also supports the defendant’s own business beyond mere press content because it goes beyond improving or maintaining a competitive position vis-à-vis other press undertakings. The defendant markets a product separate from the press activity.

Comment

1. The Higher Regional Court noted that the defendant also publishes recommendation lists for lawyers, tax advisers, employers and estate agents. While the GSC’s particularly strict standard is explicitly tied to the health context, the general principles on misleading test logos apply across the board.

2. Lawyer rankings follow methodologies that bear a striking resemblance to the physician rankings of the case discussed. They rely heavily on peer recommendations and client feedback (the equivalent of "colleague recommendations" and "patient reviews"), supplemented by self-reported information from the lawyers and firms themselves. The weighting of these criteria is typically opaque, and the resulting categories and awards - "Band 1", "Gold", "Hall of Fame", "Global Leader" - convey unqualified quality claims not unlike “Top Physician”. 

3. Beyond the matter of transparency of the rankings, another question is whether they constitute comparative advertising and fulfil the conditions of Art. 4 of Directive 2006/114/EC on misleading and comparative advertising ("MCAD"). In particular, Art. 4(c) MCAD only allows an objective comparison of one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative features of the goods and services, which may include price. Now, which features of the law firms or individual lawyers are assessed objectively and reflected in the rankings? Of course, the legal directories may benefit from press freedom but lawyers and law firms do not.

 
4. Finally, the decision is a reminder that press freedom has limits. Publishing a ranking in a magazine is editorial activity protected by the freedom of the press. Licensing a logo derived from that ranking for use in third-party advertising is not. This distinction should prompt ranking providers to reconsider how they market their badges and what disclosures must accompany them.