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The best lawyer directories Why are lawyer directories important for law firms? What is the best strategy for lawyer directories? Establish credibility in the digital legal landscape
Being listed on an online lawyer directory is an essential tactic for improving your law firm’s visibility and building up your client base. Your firm’s presence in lawyer directories gives you a platform to stand out from your competitors.
Traditionally, lawyer directories were little more than an online, phone-book-style listing. But like most things, online lawyer directories have evolved. The best legal directories now serve as channels that:
- Generate new leads
- Enhance your firm’s online reputation
- Improve your ranking in search results
In this post, we’ll outline the best legal directories your firm should consider. We’ll also review how a listing in the top lawyer directories can help your firm grow—and provide actionable tips on integrating law firm directories into your marketing strategy.
What are lawyer directories?
A lawyer directory is a type of online directory (a website that catalogs business websites) focused on lawyer and law firm listings. Attorney directories make it easier for potential clients to search and find your law firm. They also offer valuable marketing opportunities for lawyers, including lead generation, search engine optimization (SEO), and online reviews.
The best lawyer directories
Below are some of the best lawyer directories. Read on to learn more about which directories you and your firm should have a presence on.
| Lawyer Directory | Description | Noteworthy Features |
| Avvo | Legal directory and marketing services. | Avvo offers free Q&A articles for those looking for legal help. |
| Nolo | Allows you to publish articles on your firm’s profile. | Nolo also offers books, legal forms, and software, among other products. |
| Expertise.com | A directory that verifies the best local experts. | Expertise.com provides an extensive directory of legal services. |
| FindLaw | A network of multiple websites. | FindLaw features a comprehensive state law directory. |
| Lawyers.com | A hub of free legal information with a lawyer database. | Lawyers.com has content covering 1,000+ practice areas. |
| Lawyer.com | A global lawyer directory. | Lawyer.com has a Q&A section, free legal content, and legal plans to support those looking for legal help. |
| LegalZoom | Offers a local attorney directory for prospective clients. | LegalZoom also offers a paid legal subscription plan. |
| Justia | A legal information portal offering free professional lawyer profiles. | Justia offers legal guides on various practice areas as well as a pro-bono section. |
| HG.org | A lawyer directory with high authority boasting over 1,200,000 unique monthly visitors. | HG.org offers global databases for prospective clients around the world. |
| Super Lawyers | A lawyer directory that functions as a rating service for lawyers. | With Super Lawyers, prospective clients can search lawyers near them. |
| Martindale.com | Lawyers and firms can make a professional profile to gain exposure via millions of monthly visitors. | Martindale-Hubbel offers lead generation services and the ability for clients to filter by location and practice area. |
What are the top 10 best lawyer directories?
1. Avvo
As one of the most trafficked websites in the legal industry, Avvo offers legal directory and marketing services for potential clients and lawyers. But what sets the platform apart is its lawyer reviews. A high rating on your Avvo profile heightens your credibility and helps you stand out to prospective clients—before they even contact you.
2. Nolo
Nolo’s network of legal content websites and practice area-specific sites are one of the biggest sources of free legal information for people researching legal issues online. Perhaps more importantly, out of the site’s millions of visitors per month, over 100,000 request to speak with an attorney.
Nolo also lets you publish articles on your firm’s profile, which helps build your law firm’s credibility, online authority, and search engine ranking.
3. Expertise.com
Expertise.com finds and reviews the top service professionals in over 200 industries across the US. Each month, the team scores more than 60,000 businesses to help customers find the best-qualified professional for their needs. Expertise.com features only objectively quantified and qualified professionals hand-picked by their selection process, and they have an extensive repository of legal service reviews.
You can request a review for your legal services on their website.
FindLaw
One of the first online lawyer directories created, FindLaw is now a robust network of multiple websites. These websites offer lawyer directories along with online legal Q&A forums, free legal guides, and articles. In addition, FindLaw’s Legal Blogs network allows lawyers to create content on a variety of topics. This content can help you build authority, attract new clients, and drive traffic back to your firm’s website.
4. Lawyers.com
With more than 1 million lawyer and law firm profiles, Lawyers.com is a hub for free legal information, including articles and blogs about common legal issues. It even has a recognizable name that’s simple for clients to remember and search for.
Lawyers.com simplifies the process of connecting individuals with the ideal lawyer for their specific needs through its user-friendly search feature and comprehensive lawyer reviews.
5. Lawyer.com
Though the name is similar to the previous directory, Lawyer.com is a separate lawyer directory option. Lawyer.com is global (serving all major legal markets worldwide), and offers key features for connecting lawyers with potential clients. These features include a directory, a free Q&A section, complimentary legal content, and a legal plan.
6. LegalZoom
LegalZoom’s core business is do-it-yourself legal filings and documents. But they also have a paid legal subscription plan, known as the Legal Plan Attorney Network, which gives customers direct access to lawyers. Lawyers in this network can accept consultation work and handle more complex services for subscribers.
In addition, LegalZoom also offers a Local Attorney Directory, which lets lawyers refer potential customers who need help from an attorney in their area.
7. Justia
While you may think of Justia as a legal information portal, the website has free, professional lawyer profiles. This is a boon, as Justia is the highest-trafficked US legal website with over 12 million visits a month. When you claim a Justia lawyer profile, it will also appear on the Legal Information Institute (Cornell)’s website—making you even more visible to online searchers.
8. HG.org
As a lawyer directory with high authority and more than 1.2 million unique monthly visitors, HG.org is searchable by area, law firm, or practice type. Because HG.org offers more than 260 practice area categories, the site lets lawyers build a specialized listing to attract a specific target client base.
9. Super Lawyers
Super Lawyers is a unique type of lawyer directory that functions as a rating service for lawyers. The Super Lawyers list is based on a multiphase selection process. Being part of this elite list, with only the top 5% of attorneys making the annual cut, not only underscores your high level of achievement but also associates you with excellence in the eyes of potential clients.
10. Martindale.com
Martindale.com lets you create a lawyer directory profile that maximizes the potential eyes on you. A professional Martindale-Hubbell profile gives your firm exposure to over 23 million visitors monthly through the site’s extensive network. This network includes Lawyers.com, Martindale.com, Nolo.com, and other sites.
Why are lawyer directories important for law firms?
Attorney directories are powerful tools for law firm marketing and helping clients find lawyers. Here’s why:
Lead generation
Focusing on lead generation is a quick, relatively simple, and effective way to attract more clients as part of your law firm’s overall marketing strategy. You can generate a fast influx of new potential business by taking advantage of the lead generation and advertising services offered by lawyer directories.
Local SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) is vital for law firms as it enhances online visibility, builds credibility, and ensures that potential clients can easily find and trust the firm’s services.
When someone searches for a lawyer online, they’re most likely looking for an attorney in their geographical area. Your online marketing strategy should include ways to help your firm rank higher in local search results. This includes listing your firm in local lawyer directories.
As lawyer directories like Avvo are major websites with high PageRank authority, local searches are likely to include their results. So, when someone searches for a lawyer in their area, your Avvo profile may come up in the Google search results, making you more likely to be seen.
You can learn more about local SEO for law firms with this five-step guide.
Backlinks for SEO
Backlinks—aka referral links on other websites that direct traffic to your website—play a key role in SEO, and backlinks from law firm directories can be powerful tools in this equation.
Our guide to SEO for lawyers explains how backlinks use the credibility of a trusted website to validate your firm’s online reputation. The more links that your law firm gets from popular websites, the higher your law firm’s SEO credibility will be. Subsequently, the higher your firm will rank in search results.
The best lawyer directories are trusted, high-authority websites. So, backlinks from their websites are valuable. Directories that let you publish articles with backlinks on your profile give you a chance to enhance your firm’s SEO ranking.
Drive traffic to your law firm website
One of the main advantages of listing your law firm in a directory is to direct potential clients to your firm’s website. But just having a profile doesn’t take full advantage of the opportunity. Make sure you have great reviews on your lawyer directory profiles to drive traffic to your website.
Build a great online reputation
Gaining trust is important, but building a great online reputation takes work and time. Maintaining profiles on lawyer directories and getting great reviews and ratings from clients and other attorneys is a powerful way to enhance your firm’s reputation online.
Help those who need it the most
Let’s face it: You can’t be everywhere at once, helping everyone who needs legal support. What you can do is use lawyer directories to connect with the clients who need you the most.
For example, if you’re a bilingual lawyer who speaks fluent Spanish, perhaps you might consider having a presence in a Spanish legal directory. Alternatively, if you’re a lawyer with experience in handling domestic violence cases, and wish to help women looking for legal representation in this area, it makes sense to be on the WomensLaw directory.
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What is the best strategy for lawyer directories?
Every law firm has unique needs, so each will have a slightly different approach to using lawyer directories. A great starting point for every firm is to claim your spot in the best free legal directories. From there, you can build out your strategy by selecting attorney directories that align with your goals.
Here are five tips for using legal directories:
1. Claim your free lawyer directory listings
Pick the low-hanging (and free) fruit first. Before you invest in paid or premium lawyer directories, consider ways for lawyers to advertise online for free. Claim your law firm’s free listings on local and state bar listing websites, search engines like Bing and Yahoo, and free lawyer directories like Avvo and Justia.
Avvo, for example, uses publicly available information from the State Bar to automatically create an “unclaimed” lawyer profile for every licensed attorney. Because of this, you likely already have a blank Avvo profile waiting to make your firm easier to find and get reviews—making it one of the best free legal directories there is.
2. Choose attorney directories with these features
With so many lawyer directory options available, you want to be selective and choose the best matches for your firm. Look for the following features:
- It should be high-traffic and a trusted site. If the directory is small and doesn’t get many visitors, it’s unlikely to be of much help with visibility. Check the directory’s web traffic to make sure it’s worth your time to build a profile.
- It should offer features that attract clients. Sites that allow clients to leave reviews or allow you to answer legal questions provide more value to clients searching for legal services.
- It should let you add content to your profile. A lawyer profile with lots of details is more useful to prospective customers, so prioritize legal directories that let you add your content to your profile.
3. Prioritize online reviews
Today’s customers seek out and value online reviews for all kinds of services, including legal. With this in mind, the ability to collect positive online reviews is vital when considering listing your firm in an attorney directory—because good reviews can translate into new business.
As Loraine DiSalvo, Partner at Morgan & DiSalvo, P.C., says: “We have been blessed with a ton of great reviews, and I hear all the time that the reviews were one reason even people who were actually referred by another client or a professional adviser made their appointments.”
Of course, to win those positive reviews on lawyer directories, it’s important to remember to focus on community and provide a client-centered experience.
4. Make sure your information is consistent
Taking the time to ensure that your NAP (name, address, phone) citations are consistent is a simple step. But it makes a big difference in increasing the effectiveness of your law firm’s online visibility.
Be sure to:
- Be consistent. Check that the formatting and details of your law firm are the same everywhere they appear—in terms of spelling, abbreviations, word order, spacing, etc. This includes your firm’s name, address, and phone number.
- Confirm details across platforms. Verify that the information is the same on your law firm website, social media accounts, and websites like lawyer directories. While using “St.” on your website and “Street” in attorney directories may seem like a minor difference, these small inconsistencies can negatively impact your website in search engines.
- Make updates promptly. Remember to update any online lawyer directories right away if your contact information changes.
Establish credibility in the digital legal landscape
When people can find you online, you have more opportunities to win new clients and grow your law firm. Lawyer directories can help.
These directories are powerful tools for getting your firm seen by potential clients—both by helping people find you on the directories and boosting your law firm website’s SEO to improve search engine rankings.
There are many options available to choose from. However, the top lawyer directories have high traffic and offer valuable features to potential customers, like client reviews. While you don’t need a profile on every possible attorney directory, you can craft a strategy that starts with utilizing free legal profiles and grows from there. The secret is to put your firm out there and help prospective clients find you when they need you.
We published this blog post in March 2021. Last updated: .
Categorized in: Marketing
