What Are The Top Lawyer Directories (2020)

A special “thank you” to LawTally for helping us get the DA (Domain Authority) updated for our top 87 law firm directory list.  As of today, these are the most up to date domain authority ratings for this list of law firm directories.

Below you’ll find our ongoing work on building out the ultimate list of lawyer directories.  We are continually updating this list as I find more information on these legal directories, or we find new law firm directories to include.

The topic of law firm directories is of interest to us because we believe citation distribution is what builds location authority, and location authority is the fuel that drives success for our law firm SEO campaigns.

Your law firm rankings, presence, and productivity (i.e. attracting new clients) from search will be in direct proportion to the scale and magnitude of your law firm’s location authority.  And again, the secret sauce to building location authority is by increasing the scale and magnitude of your citation portfolio.

Below you’ll find the ongoing work building out the ultimate list of lawyer directories.

I’m continuing to update this list as I find gather more information on these legal directories.

Some of the information I’m continuing to update is website domain authority, do follow or no follow backlinks, and whether you can achieve a full lawyer or law firm citation or just NAP clean up.

When it comes to getting your law firm ranked in Google local search results, or Google Maps search results, a lot of your local SEO ranking power will come directly from your citation portfolio.

Basically, your citation portfolio is the collection of all the places on the web where your law firm’s business name, address, and phone number are published.  This is also referred to as your NAP citation (N = business name, A = address, P = phone number).

But not all resources or websites are created equal for citations.  Which means, it matters where you create citations for your law firm local SEO strategy, if you expect to rank and compete in Google local search.

And I can assure you, with a lot of law firm local SEO experience under my belt, the legal market is brutally competitive in Google local search, andd you’ll need all the ranking power you can get to compete… especially in large metro areas.

I like to apply the 80 / 20 rule when it comes to creating citations for our local SEO law firm clients.

This means, 80% of the law firm’s local SEO ranking power will come from 20% of the total citation portfolio.

So the overwhelming majority of your law firm citations published on the web will not carry much ranking power.

But a few of your law firm citations will indeed carry a substantial amount of authority and ranking power.

1. they carry a substantial amount of domain authority (DA)
2. they provide do follow backlinks

Domain authority is important for law firm local SEO strategies as this will be a majority deciding factor in where your law firm ranks in Google Maps.  Again, getting citations built for your law firm is critically important.  But even more important are the places where your law firm citations are published.  The more authoritative the website is where your citation is published, the more ranking power that citation provides back to your law firm’s website and Google Maps listing.  And the more domain authority your law firm has, the higher your rank.

Do follow backlinks to your law firm website is important as well, for both your local SEO rankings and your Google organic rankings.  But for local SEO purposes, do follow backlinks, and especially do follow backlinks from relevant and highly authoritative websites, carry a substantial amount of local ranking power.

And these 5 law firm directories are, in my opinion, the best places to start with your law firm local SEO strategy.  In fact, I believe they are the best places to start for your law firm’s organic rankings in Google as well.  But for now, I’ll stick with the topic of local SEO.

So let’s get to it… here are my top 5 favorite local SEO law firm directory resources.

I’ve listed these law firm directories in reverse chronological order according to domain authority (DA)… that way I save the best one for last!

The HG.org law firm directory carries a strong DA 71 (domain authority of 71).

What’s interesting about HG.org, is I sometimes get different readings as to whether they provide true do follow backlinks or not.  The majority of my research shows they do provide “do follow” backlinks to law firm websites.  But occasionally I’ll find pages where a law firm’s website is actually “no followed”.  I’m not really sure why that is…

Regardless, HG.org is a highly authoritative and relevant resource for law firms, and can provide a substantial amount of local SEO ranking power for your law firm with a properly constructed citation and backlink.

The Lawyers.com law firm directory carries a domain authority of 82 (DA 82).

Lawyers.com is an extension of the Martindale law firm directory (which is covered below).  But even though Martindale law firm profiles distribute to the Lawyers.com directory, the two are completely independent websites and resources.

As such, because of the DA 82 and the fact that it’s a completely separate domain, Lawyers.com is one of my favorite resources for law firm local SEO.

Plus, the Lawyers.com directory provides do follow backlinks to your law firm website.  Which is another powerful resource to add to your law firm local SEO arsenal.

The Nolo.com law firm directory carries a powerful DA 85 (domain authority of 85).

Nolo is one of my favorite law firm directory resources because not only do you get a strong citation and backlink in a highly authoritative legal directory, but you can add articles to your law firm profile.

The ability to publish articles is a big deal because it allows you to contribute to the traffic, exposure, and authority of your law firm profile.

Even better, when you publish articles on your Nolo profile, the articles are actually published on LawFirms.com which carries a respective DA 42 (domain authority of 42) and PA 52 (page authority of 52).  Better yet, you can create additional citations and backlinks in your Nolo articles (which are published on LawFirms.com) to help create a more diverse and relevant backlink and citation portfolio.

This is why Nolo is one of my all time favorites as a resource to drive local SEO rankings for law firms.

The Martindale.com law firm directory carries a whopping DA 87 (domain authority of 87).

When you create an enhanced profile for your law firm on Martindale, as I mentioned above, the data gets distributed to Lawyers.com as well.

But with Martindale carrying a domain authority of 87, and the ability to create both a citation and do follow backlink for your law firm, this is legal directory that you cannot afford to miss.

The Findlaw.com law firm directory carries a powerful DA 91 (domain authority of 91).

I saved Findlaw for last primarily because of its domain authority.  Having a legal directory resource that carries a DA 91, and allows law firms to create a citation and do follow backlink, is a strong resource to leverage for law firm local SEO.

Likewise with Nolo profiles, Findlaw gives law firms the ability to publish content on their Legal Blogs network.  And the Findlaw legal blogs network also carries a substantial amount of domain authority.

I have found with Findlaw blogs, the profile of the authors typically link out to their LinkedIn profiles, not back to the law firm’s profile on Findlaw.

Also to note, the Findlaw blogs do not always carry the best reputation.

These are my favorite law firm directories for local SEO.  But just because they are my favorite, DOES NOT mean they are the only resource needed for your law firm to get top rankings in Google local search.

Beyond these national level legal directories, you’ll need to dig deeper and find more locally relevant directories and resources to target for your citation and backlink distribution efforts.

Achieving top Google local rankings for law firms, and really any business for that matter, is a process that requires a concerted effort over time.  You need to invest time, effort, and resources into building your brand authority, citations, and backlinks to your law firm website in order to rise to the #1 local rankings… especially in large metro areas for highly competitive legal search phrases.

Last week, as we were building backlink and citation resources for one of our law firm clients, we made an interesting discovery regarding NOLO, which is one of 11 specific resources we leverage for all of our legal clients.

NOLO is now free with a subscription to both Martindale & Lawyers.com.

This was a pleasant surprise on our part because it ended up saving us $450 which was our normal expenditure for the annual subscription to NOLO.

So for the subscription cost to Martindale / Lawyers.com, we got NOLO added in for free!

These 3 law firm directories are part of our 11 specific resources we leverage for all of our law firm clients for building location and domain authority.

Here’s a quick break down on the domain authority for each of these 3 legal resources, which shows you why these legal directories are such an important component to 11 resources we leverage:

• Martindale.com:  domain authority of 87 (DA 87)
• NOLO.com:  domain authority of 85 (DA 85)
• Lawyers.com:  domain authority of 82 (DA 82)

The only other resource in our group of 11 that carries more domain authority than these is Findlaw.com with a domain authority of 91 (DA 91).

Location and domain authority are important components to our overall SEO & Local SEO strategy for law firms because they contribute to higher rankings in search (both local and organic) and more presence throughout the web.

The combination of ‘higher rankings’ and ‘more presence’ is important because, as you know, the legal market is one of the most competitive business categories in search.  And the competition is more profound in large metro areas.

As such, leveraging the most authoritative external resources becomes an important strategy for law firms to compete in these hyper-competitive markets in search.

So it was a pleasant surprise to see that NOLO was free with our subscriptions to Martindale and Lawyers.com.

NOLO and Lawyers.com are both owned and operated by Martindale-Hubbell.

If you have questions, feel free to post them in the comments below.

If you need help with your law firm local SEO efforts, you can always hire us.