Breaking Barriers to Justice
“Hablamos Español” Is Not Enough: Why Language Marketing Without Cultural Humility Is Failing Clients By Maria Hall, Catalina Rodas
Walk into almost any California law firm serving immigrant communities and you will see the same promise: “Hablamos Español.” For potential Spanish- speaking clients, it signals trust, inclusion, and the hope of finding justice. By bridging the gap for communities with limited legal access, multilingualism gives law firms a powerful competitive edge in the marketplace while also allowing them to uplift and empower historically underserved populations. But there is a warning lawyers must consider: advertising language access creates an ethical obligation. The California Rules of Professional Conduct require attorneys who advertise that they provide legal services in another language to actually be able to provide those services in that language. Rule 7.1 prohibits false or misleading communications about a lawyer’s services, and Comment 5 specifically provides that a lawyer may not “state or imply” that they can provide legal services in a language other than English unless they actually can . If a lawyer does not speak the advertised language, the firm must disclose the job title of the bilingual staff member who provides the language assistance and whether that
person is a licensed attorney. But the duty goes beyond disclosure. It goes beyond simply speaking the language. A lawyer can speak Spanish and still fail a Spanish-speaking client.
Spanish Fluency Is Not Cultural Competence
Speaking Spanish does not automatically make a lawyer culturally competent any more than speaking English makes someone culturally aware. The Spanish-speaking community in the United States is not one single culture. There are millions of Spanish speakers with different histories, identities, migration experiences, socioeconomic realities, and cultural frameworks. Spanish itself varies dramatically across regions and countries. There are more than twenty Spanish-speaking countries, from Spain to Equatorial Guinea, and many Latin American communities also speak Indigenous languages alongside Spanish. Some clients may not even have the words in their language to describe the legal concepts a lawyer is trying to explain.
Communication is never culture-neutral. People interpret words, silence, eye contact, authority,
Catalina Rodas is a partner at Riley | Ersoff | Rodas LLP, where she represents families harmed by unsafe housing conditions. An immigrant from Colombia and a board member of CAOC, she is committed to advancing access to justice through culturally humble, client-centered advocacy.
Maria Hall is a civil rights lawyer, Director of the Los Angeles Incubator Consortium, and co- founder of Hub for Innovative Law Offices in Washington, DC. Since 2015, she has helped 126 diverse lawyers launch firms dedicated to expanding access to justice in Southern California.
catalina@rileyersoff.com
mariaehall@yahoo.com
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Consumer Attorneys of California
FORUM July/August 2026
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