Lawyer Directories: Best Legal Directories in 2023

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 leads, enhance your firm’s online reputation, and improve your ranking in online search results.

In this post, we’ll outline the best legal directories your firm should consider. We’ll also review how listing in lawyer directories can help your firm grow and provide actionable tips on integrating law firm directories into your marketing strategy.

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, software, among other products.
Expertise.com	Directory that verifies the best local experts.	Expertise.com provides an extensive directory of legal services.
FindLaw	A network of multiple websites.	Features a comprehensive state law directory.
Lawyers.com	A hub of free legal information with a lawyer database.	Their content covers 1000+ practice areas.
Lawyer.com	A global lawyer directory.	Lawyer.com has a Q&A section, free legal content, and a legal plan 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 offers global databases for prospective clients around the world.
Superlawyers.com	A lawyer directory that functions as a rating service for lawyers.	Prospective clients can search for lawyers near them.
Martindale.com	Lawyers and firms can make a  professional profile to gain exposure via millions of monthly visitors.	They offer 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 researches 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 legal 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 makes it easy for people to find and get in touch with the right lawyer for their needs with the search feature and lawyer reviews.

5. Lawyer.com

Though the name is similar to the previous attorney 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, free Q&A section, free 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, that 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 that 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 U.S. legal website with over 10 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 for online searchers.

8. HG.org

As a lawyer directory with high authority and more than 1,200,000 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. Superlawyers.com

Super Lawyers is a unique type of lawyer directory that functions as a rating service for lawyers. Super Lawyers list based on a multiphase selection process. While you have to be nominated and selected to be part of the Super Lawyers list, potential clients can see you as top-rated and associated with a high level of achievement if you make the list.

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 15 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

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 utilize 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. 

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 firm’s spot in free legal directories. From there, you can build out your strategy by selecting attorney directories that align with your goals. Here are five tips using for law firm directories:

1. Claim your Google My Business listing

Now more than ever, your prospective clients are online and using tech to find services. As the 2020 Legal Trends Report notes, consumer comfort and use of technology jumped last year. Specifically, 52% of consumers indicated that they use technology more, and 58% said that technology was more important to them than before the pandemic. This means you need to make it easy for prospective clients to find you online and on Google. 

2. 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 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.

3. 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.

4. Prioritize online reviews

Today’s customers seek out and value online reviews in all kinds of services, including legal. With this in mind, the ability to collect positive online reviews is vital when considering listing your firm on 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.

5. 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. 

Check that the formatting and details of your law firm are the same everywhere they appear. These details include your firm’s name, address, and phone number—in terms of spelling, abbreviations, word order, spacing, etc. Make sure the details are 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. And should your contact information change, remember to update on any online lawyer directories, and your Google My Business profile, right away.

Conclusion 

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 directories available to choose from. But the best ones 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 free 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: May 24, 2023.

Categorized in: Marketing