HB2733

Effective September 1, 2025, HB2733 expressly adds social-media direct messages and other electronic communications to Texas’s barratry statute—the law restricting certain ways of recruiting professional clients. It changes Penal Code 38.12(a)(2) and (d)(2), not every kind of advertising or every profession. Final law

Subsection (a)(2), which requires intent to obtain an economic benefit, now expressly includes electronic solicitation for oneself or another, including false, misleading or deceptive electronic communications. The word “including” does not limit the added electronic language to deceptive messages. The existing law also covers knowingly financing prohibited solicitation and professionals knowingly accepting employment resulting from it. Statutory framework

Subsection (d) concerns Texas-licensed attorneys, chiropractors, physicians, surgeons, private investigators and other people licensed, certified or registered by a Texas health-care regulator. Its text addresses communications intended to obtain professional employment from someone who has not sought that employment, representation, advice or care. HB2733 adds electronic channels to the existing list; it does not create the following conditions anew. The text covers communications that:

• Concern the recipient’s or a relative’s accident/disaster and are provided before the 31st day afterward.
• Concern legal representation in a specific matter when the sender knows or reasonably should know the recipient already has a lawyer in that matter.
• Concern a lawsuit against the recipient or a relative, unless the lawsuit naming that defendant has been on file for more than 31 days.
• Disregard a known or reasonably knowable desire by the injured person or relative not to be contacted about employment; the existing statute presumes that desire when the accident report records it.
• Involve coercion, duress, fraud, overreaching, harassment, intimidation or undue influence, or contain a false, fraudulent, misleading, deceptive or unfair statement or claim.

Important limits: HB2733 does not revise Section 38.01(11)’s definition of “solicit employment,” which still says “in person or by telephone” and describes unsolicited, event- or problem-specific professional contact. That definition excludes specified family-initiated communications, prior/existing professional-client relationships, qualifying nonprofit legal education and professional advertisements through public media. Section 38.12(c) separately excepts conduct authorized by professional-conduct or court rules from prosecution under (a) or (b), not expressly (d). Read those provisions together; the new electronic wording is not a sound basis for saying every online advertisement or client message is criminal. This briefing identifies the retained wording, rather than claiming a court has resolved its interaction with HB2733. Definitions

The bill leaves the statutory punishment levels unchanged: (a)/(b) offenses are third-degree felonies; (d) offenses are normally Class A misdemeanors, becoming third-degree felonies with a prior conviction under (d). The ordinary ranges are up to one year in jail and/or a $4,000 fine for Class A, and two to ten years in prison with a possible fine up to $10,000 for third-degree felonies. These are statutory ranges, not a prediction of any person’s sentence. Punishment provisions

The changes apply only to offenses committed on or after September 1, 2025. If any element occurred earlier, the act preserves the former law for that offense.