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Best Lawyer Directories in 2022 – Attorney Directory Visibility Analysis

Updated February, 2022 For a 4th year, Everest Legal Marketing has compiled data regarding the rankings and visibility of the best legal directories. The legal advertising industry is always quickly changing, and if you’re not on top of who’s doing what, you may find yourself spending tens of thousands of dollars a year on attorney directories when your marketing budget could be better allocated. If you like this content, and would like similar information about legal advertising and SEO topics, “Like” our Facebook page where we regularly publish content relevant to legal marketing.

For this study we’re analyzing what we, and most industry professionals, consider the “top” attorney directories. *You may find it odd that we’ve chosen to include Yelp and Expertise.com in a study of law directories, but both of these directories have established themselves as highly visible directories when searching for a lawyer.

You can download the rank tracking spreadsheets for all years here:

Methodology

When discussing the concept of this study, our ultimate goal was to make the results easy to digest and help you determine how to best use some of your advertising budget. Sometimes simplicity is difficult to design into something as complex as rankings, multiple & varied search phrases, multiple cities, etc. Here are the methods we used to ensure a reliable data set:

  • All search data was gathered on the same day (12/20/21), from the same computer & IP address.
  • We used an Incognito window in Firefox to ensure that Google did not manipulate results based on prior searches, (here’s why).
  • We did not click on any websites during the study, we simply examined where each directory ranked.
  • We are only examining “Organic” ranking positions and not considering paid or local listings.
  • In an effort to make the data simple, we categorized the results in four ways:
    • “Page 1 – Top 3” (Green)
    • “Page 1 – Below Top 3” (Green)
    • “Page 2” (Yellow)
    • “Not on Page 1 or 2” (Red)
  • We chose to analyze the following cities based on population, diversity and heavy competition:
    • Los Angeles, CA
    • Houston, TX
    • Chicago, IL
    • New York, NY
    • Jacksonville, FL
  • We chose the following practice searches based on heavy competition:
    • “criminal defense lawyer”
    • “personal injury lawyer”
    • “divorce lawyer”
    • “workers’ compensation lawyer”
    • “business lawyer”
    • “real estate lawyer”
    • “estate planning lawyer”
    • “employment lawyer”
    • “bankruptcy lawyer”
  • For the purposes of simplicity, we chose to use the word “lawyer” instead of “attorney” – so a search in this study would look like “Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer”. Variations in the phrase, singular vs plural, IP address of the User, city in the back vs in the front all have an impact on rankings.

For the purposes of this study, we chose not to record & analyze actual ranking position due to constant fluctuations. Instead, we opted to display the attorney directories that ranked within the top three results as our top measure. This is because when Google puts a result within the top 3 organic, they tend to have more stability in these positions when compared to the rest of the results on page 1. Our “Page 1- Below Top 3” measure is also designated as green to show that it’s still a page 1 rank, (organic positions 4-10), but not a top 3 position at the time this study was conducted.

Why do we Perform this Study?

After years of experience in the legal advertising industry, we know that our clients and hundreds of thousands of attorneys throughout the United States collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars on attorney directory advertising annually. Often, many attorneys are too busy being lawyers to analyze the viability of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars a month on attorney directory advertising and they just trust their sales rep. Having been a sales rep for Lawyers.com, I can tell you that I’ve experienced many times a lawyer who’s too busy to talk for 30 minutes, but just sends a renewal contract without analyzing the facts. The purpose of this study is to identify the top legal directories and how they rank for competitive searches throughout the US. Since we only look at five major cities and nine search phrases (practice areas), we suggest you do your own research relevant to your practice and geography. This study is mainly meant to serve as a litmus test or guideline to how certain directories rank for competitive searches, you may find (like our study shows), that certain directories rank very well in some cities but terribly in others.

What’s new for 2022?

In 2022 we added Expertise.com to our study. We first noticed their progress as early as 2019 when they started to appear on page 1 & 2 of Google for a handful of attorney practice searches. In 2022 it’s clear that they’ve eclipsed name brand competitors like Lawyers.com and Avvo for almost all search scenarios. This means that Expertise.com is becoming a more viable advertising platform than even dedicated legal directories. However, I do have some problems with their website and SEO strategy (read more below).

In 2020, we added the Moz Domain Authority Score (at the time this article was published), and identified whether you receive a “No Follow” or “Follow” link for each legal directory we’ve analyzed. We did this because the value of directory advertising in the search engine optimization (SEO) space isn’t solely dependent on the visibility of a website. Meaning, that your firm’s website rankings on search engines generally increase when you get a backlink from a high authority website, even if the legal directory doesn’t rank that well.

How Was the Data Collected?

For 2022, we used the same methodology that we used in prior years, and analyzed the same cities and search phrases so that we could see if there were noticeable upward or downward trends.

Best Lawyer Directories for 2022

In no particular order, here are the top attorney directories for 2022:

Super Lawyers – Visibility Softened but Still a Top Visible Directory

Super Lawyers has the best Page 1 visibility of all of the websites examined in this study. We also saw that the Super Lawyers Domain Authority score shrank the most since 2020, from DA72 to DA59. That may not seem like a lot, but Moz uses a logarithmic scale and measures “orders of magnitude” – so falling 13 points at the higher end of the scale is a bigger impact than falling 13 points at the lower end of the scale. Given their excellent visibility, I would strongly consider advertising on their website if you’re eligible.

Justia – Still the Best Value With Great Visibility

I’ve become a fan of Justia because their advertising rates have remained reasonable, their rankings are awesome and you can get 100% SEO value from a free listing. Outside of Super Lawyers, Justia has the most page 1 rankings of all the directories we looked at.

FindLaw – Still a Reliable Top Legal Directory, but Dominance is Waning.

FindLaw is still a dominant force in the online attorney directory space. Overall their rankings were good, yet they’ve definitely had some loss in dominance in terms of website visibility in the last 1-2 years. That’s not to say FindLaw is in trouble or has lost page 1 visibility. Primarily, you could always count on Findlaw to be in the top 5 positions for virtually every search, and that can’t be said anymore. In cities like New York and Jacksonville they lost a couple page 1 rankings, but improved some rankings for searches in Chicago specifically. The clients I have that have a strong budget with FindLaw typically get good ROI, but this is not what some would consider “affordable”.

Lawyers.com – Dead, Dead, DEAD!

Lawyers.com has not improved any ranking position whatsoever. In fact, it’s tough to compare 2020 to 2022 because since we started this process in 2018 Lawyers.com has never ranked well on Google. If they didn’t have an already strong brand, connection to Martindale-Hubbell and high Domain Authority we may have removed them from this study altogether. *Update June 20, 2022: Today I noticed that Martindale-Hubbell / Nolo removed the “Follow” link attribute on listings & profiles on Lawyers.com and it is now classified as Sponsored – “nofollow” (but not Martindale.com). It seems to me that there is literally no reason anyone should continue to pay to be included on this directory since now the “SEO” value is virtually null.

Avvo – Tied With Lawyers.com for Last Place

Avvo was acquired in 2018 by Internet Brands, (the company that owns Lawyers.com, Nolo, Martindale.com and many others), and ever since Avvo has been headed down the drain in terms of visibility. In 2019 many were hopeful that the acquisition would mean either better performance or lower advertising rates. Based on some of our conversations with sales reps, there has been an effort to cross-sell Lawyers.com and Avvo with compelling bundling – the problem of course is that you’d be buying into legal directories that no one can find. As of 2022, Avvo rarely appears on page 1 of Google for most competitive practice area search scenarios. The only upside is that their attorney profiles generally rank well when a User is searching for an attorney’s name. I would suggest that you make sure to have a listing on Avvo, but I wouldn’t advise anyone to pay for advertising on this platform at this time.

Yelp – Hot & Cold Rankings

I say it to clients all the time – Yelp is a love/hate relationship. We recently wrote an article about Yelp’s SEO influence and there’s no doubting their power and authority in the directory space. Their rankings remain hot & cold depending on where you are. If you’re in California and New York they have good to great rankings in many cities, in other states and major cities like Jacksonville and Houston, Yelp was spotty. My recommendation for paid advertising on Yelp is to see how they rank in your individual city, or neighboring cities. Also, keep in mind that they have enough household brand name recognition to make some dedicated Users bypass a Google search and go straight to Yelp to find a lawyer – Many lawyers would think that’s hard to believe, but to an average consumer Yelp is a familiar & trusted place to find a service provider.

Expertise.com – A New Player Has Entered the Game!

Are you familiar with Expertise.com (Nofollow; Moz DA 50)? You should probably become acquainted with them as they now rank better than Lawyers.com, Avvo and are starting to knock on FindLaw’s door. In 2019 we noticed that they were starting to hit page 1 for a number of searches, in 2020 we noticed a lot of page 1 rankings, now that we’re in 2022 we can clearly see they are taking their SEO seriously and must now be included in our analysis. One of the things I really like about this directory is that a business applies to be included and as part of the selection process Expertise.com secret shops the businesses by calling and actually talking to someone at the business with some basic questions and factors the consumer experience into the decision process.

*Update February 2022: The CEO of Expertise.com David Franklin, and the Director of Sales & Marketing Chris Montepara reached out to me to discuss this article and my feedback. This is the first time any company has ever cared to reach out to me to discuss my research or the findings; I respect the fact that they cared enough to talk about the strengths and opportunities of their platform. They also informed me of some changes headed towards Expertise.com. In response, I’ve edited the sections below this paragraph and will continue to do so as time moves on in the interest of accuracy.

Some issues with Expertise.com – Having examined their directory and assisted clients with claiming recognition badges, I can say that I do have a few critiques regarding Expertise.com.

  1. You don’t get an actual profile with a dedicated URL on their website, but you can upgrade to get one. *Edit: In my conversation with David & Chris from Expertise.com, they did inform me that they are now offering a “Personal Profile” on their platform (an upgrade at $300/mo.) – which provides the advertiser with a unique and specific URL for the User to land on. My personal opinion is that this is a must-have if you are to proceed with advertising on Expertise.com. At the time of this update, an advertiser who does not purchase a “Personal Profile” most likely won’t be found on Google when searching for your name or your law firm name. This is because Expertise.com groups all law firms / businesses on 1 super long scrolling landing page. This is great for SEO for them because it counts as one very comprehensive and authoritative page in the eyes of Google and as a result will rank well. This also means that you can only link to your profile using a “jump link” that takes a visitor to your small section of the larger page. Here’s an example https://www.expertise.com/ca/san-francisco/car-accident-lawyers#RahmanLawPC2361935 (not our client and no affiliation). However, if the User scrolls up or down a little they see all of your competitors.

  2. Their embed badges for your website are mutually beneficial. When you’re contacted by an Expertise.com rep, patted on the back for a job well done and offered a FREE recognition badge to put on your website, they request (strongly) that you show off your recognition by “embedding” the badge on your website. However, you’ll be directed to download the badge on a page like this https://www.expertise.com/ca/san-francisco/car-accident-lawyers/award – where you or your website vendor can copy the embed code to place on your website. If you look at the code (below) you’ll see that when you place the badge on your website it links to a results page within their directory where a User can easily find your competitor. This helps their SEO, and simultaneously might steer your potential client into the sea of competing local lawyers. I wrote about this same tactic years ago from a directory called Thervo. *Edit: After discussing with David & Chris from Expertise.com, they said that a firm could add the badge and link to the Home page if they preferred as an alternative, (which I’ve opted for with other clients).
    *Embed Code: <a href=”https://www.expertise.com/ca/san-francisco/car-accident-lawyers” style=”display:inline-block; border:0;”><img style=”width:200px; display:block;” width=”200″ height=”160″ src=”https://res.cloudinary.com/expertise-com/image/upload/f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto/w_auto/remote_media/awards/ca_san-francisco_car-accident-lawyers_2022.svg” alt=”Car Accident Lawyers near me” /></a>

  3. Expertise.com offers a “no-follow” link to your website, but a “follow” link when you upgrade to a Personal Profile. From a technical standpoint, you will not receive any SEO benefit from a no-follow link, though you would still receive website traffic as the link is visibly and functionally the same for the User (here’s more on backlinks). This is not unusual in the directory space as Avvo and Yelp only provide no-follow links as well. However, Avvo and Yelp also don’t ask you to link to a list of your competitors from your website. This is at least one reason I would make sure to get the Personal Profile with Expertise.com

  4. Expensive for personal injury lawyers, but reasonable rates for other practices. I obtained advertising rates for Expertise.com in a major market to be a “Featured Attorney” (top of the list) and their rates range from insane to very reasonable depending on your practice. Value is always in the eye of the beholder and should always be dependent on ROI:

    1. Personal Injury: #1 Spot taken, rate unknown, #2 Spot – $2,206 month to month, #3 spot – $1,930 month to month
    2. Car Accident – #1 Spot – $2,311 month to month, #2 Spot – $1,849 month to month
    3. Medical Malpractice: #1 Spot – $592 month to month, #2 Spot – $474 month to month
    4. Employment – #1 Spot taken, rate unknown, #2 Spot – $530  month to month, #3 Spot – $464 month to month
    5. Family Law – #1 Spot – $250 month to month, #2 Spot – $200 month to month
    6. Divorce – #1 Spot taken, rate unknown, #2 Spot – $200 month to month, #3 Spot – $160 month to month
    7. DUI – #1 Spot – $100 month to month, #2 Spot – $75  month to month
    8. Bankruptcy – #1 Spot – $100 month to month, #2 Spot – $75  month to month
    9. Criminal Defense – #1 Spot – $200 month to month, #3 Spot – $150  month to month

If you’re considering investing in advertising with Expertise.com these rates are in line with FindLaw and Super Lawyers, and on the BIG plus side you’re not locked into a long term contract like Super Lawyers or FindLaw. *Edit: It was earlier reported that there are no available side perks or benefits like there are in other directories, but David & Chris did discuss the possibility of some content opportunities for advertisers… which may be forthcoming.

In my opinion Expertise.com has done an outstanding job with their SEO, and any attorney should consider making the effort to be included. Kudos to their SEO team. However, as it stands I personally would not embed a badge that links to a page where our prospective clients could easily find all our competition.

If you’re using this article to help make some decisions about where to list your firm and if you should invest advertising dollars you should also consider some of the smaller “niche” directories. They either appeal to a specific type of lawyer, target demographic or a specific geography. While most of these websites are often lower Domain Authority, you can usually get a free or very low cost profile and backlink to your website. Google still recognizes value in links from websites that aren’t super high authority, specifically if it’s directly relevant to your practice.

www.USA-Probate.com (Follow; Moz DA 16) – This website only lists attorneys that are probate law related. The design is a bit outdated and clunky, but it’s a freebie so beggars can’t be choosers.

www.PersonalInjuryLaw.guru (Follow; Moz DA 15) – This directory lists only personal injury attorneys and has some criteria they follow to assign a lawyer as a “Verified Guru”.

www.ListaLegal.com (Nofollow; Moz DA 30) – This is an English/Spanish directory and your listing is displayed in English and Spanish versions of the website.

While getting presence on directories like these may not have a direct impact on your bottom line, they can very directly help improve the ranking of your firm’s website. If you need help finding these types of directories do a Google search for “Your Practice + Directory“, you’ll obviously see the major players but you may be surprised by some of the results on page 1 & 2 of results.

Conclusion

As the online advertising opportunities for lawyers continue to fracture, it’s critical to take advantage of every possible method to maximize your digital footprint. If you’re an attorney and looking for a partner to help you get business from Google, Everest Legal Marketing can assist with SEO of your current website, or design a brand new website in line with your wants & needs.

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