FindLaw Reviews - Read This Before Using FindLaw (2023)

What is FindLaw?

FindLaw is a legal marketing company founded in 1995 and owned by Thomson Reuters. They have one of the largest legal directories on the web and offer website design and other legal marketing services (like SEO, content development, etc.).

What services do you offer?

FindLaw offers a fairly wide range of services, but we'll focus on the main ones.

FindLaw Lawyer Directory

This listing has a great inbound link profile and listingsFindLaw directoryThey tend to rank well organically. In my experience, this is the most attractive and valuable product that FindLaw offers. With this in mind, proper use of your directory requires the client to do their due diligence and ensure the listing is getting traffic, ranking well in organic search, and ranking near the top (to secure the investment and clicks). Asattorney directorieswow, yours is very competitive and among the best on the market.

In a few regions and job areas, I've seen FindLaw perform really well: the directory page ranks well for direct job area searches and gets a decent amount of organic traffic. In other cases, I've done competitive analysis for a FindLaw URL that isn't ranking as well as you might expect. While you may get traffic, you don't have as high a chance of converting a visitor into a customer.

In every situation where I have requested information for a sponsored directory listing, I have never received the reviews before receiving the offer. It is imperative that you request an analysis and conduct your own competitive analysis to evaluate the investment. This is crucial because (as we will discuss) FindLaw makes it difficult to break the contract. So you don't want to commit long-term to something that doesn't bring ROI, but that's especially true if you do. also requires a restrictive agreement.

Numerically, you can spend $150 per click on “car crash attorney” in Google AdWords. If you're paying $1,000 a month for a FindLaw auto accident attorney list that gets 20 clicks a month, yes, a FindLaw directory seems like a more solid investment ($50 a click). But remember one thing: AdWords lets you bid on themExactlyPhrases you want With FindLaw, you're bidding for organic position and placement (a wide net, so to speak, rather than a precise match with AdWords).

Here's a list that might be worth considering depending on the price:

Why? Rated incredibly good for direct intentPersonal Injury SEO(e.g. "personal injury attorney", "personal injury attorney", etc.) Phrases. This listing can drive conversions, so depending on the price, it could be a worthwhile investment.

On the other hand, here is an example of a list where parsing can be misleading:

Why? While this list includes historical traffic analysis, its current ranking for direct intent phrases is relatively poor (second page at best). This is generally risky but can be very risky depending on the price.

FindLaw Directory and SEO

One thing to keep in mind is that you are making an investment for a premium profile (the last offer I received was $299/month) with the intention of helping improve the profileSEO for your website(as opposed to a lead generation source) is always an option. You can only get many of the benefits of a FindLaw profile from the backlink as it is a niche link with 90 DR (Domain Rating) and has tremendous authority.

website design

In general, FindLaw websites tend to be very straightforward, a complaint that applies to their peers in as welljustice. That means they have a consistent design aesthetic and apply it broadly to their client base; If you see enough FindLaw websites, you'll find that they all look the same to some extent.

That said, I won't blame you if you like their designs. After all, this is a completely subjective thing. FindLaw websites are very much like a Prius: they're not designed for Flash and style, but more for functionality and efficiency. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but it makes it extremely difficult to stand out. Just as a Prius tends to blend in with the traffic around it, a FindLaw website isn't going to draw attention to its overall "brake appeal".

Now for the rather bad parts of FindLaw's website design:

First, their websites are based on a proprietary CMS (Content Management System). That means it isimpossibleso that you can make your own changes (both as a customer and afterwards). You are essentiallyhandcuff youto your platform. In fact, one of our legal marketing colleagues (Konrad together) has another "Jailbreak Guide” to escape FindLaw.

Second, value judgments about aesthetics aside, the FindLaw sites I've seen/reviewed consistently lack proper SEO optimizations.

Marketing Services

In my experience, their marketing services to attorneys suck, to say the least. Their main form of link building is submission to key directories. The content is outdated and sparse, and lacks SEO best practices. Customer support is generally slow based on my first hand experience with their marketing team.

See GlassDoor for an explanation of why this was my experience. TheAnalyse(am 24. May 2019,to onereal Employees, not less) Data:

and here it isanother fool(this time from a former employee, in December 2017):

And here's a shorter oneFindlaw ReviewFrom a former employee:

Do you own your website and its content?

Technically, you own your website and content. However, I have to mention that the website is based on the proprietary CMS. You have something only FindLaw can update. It's like owning a house but not the land it's built on.

The same was said about the content. I have encountered many situations where FindLaw has withheld rights to website content. I'm not going to go into too much detail on the specifics of a FindLaw contract because another attorney marketing colleague,Gyi TsakalakisHe did a great job at that.Here.

FindLaw's customer agreement is very vague, stating:

8.1 Property. The parties agree that between Subscriber and West (i) the
Service Interface, West Materials, West Content and any improvements thereto
created under this Agreement are the exclusive property of West, and (ii) the
The content is the exclusive property of the subscriber. During the term of this
Agreement and thereafter neither party will use, disclose or provide to anyone
third party the property of the other party, except as expressly provided herein
Agreement or as necessary for the parties to perform their obligations or
Exercise or enforce your rights described herein.

In short, this seems to indicate that while the text itself is owned by the client, the means to update or modify that text is owned by FindLaw. Essentially, you own the front, but FindLaw owns the back. You have the car, but they have the keys.

To be fair, there are some elements of the website that are not included in any of the files FindLaw makes available to its clients that have been separated. FindLaw cannot provide access to these files due to ownership or license agreements. This includes things like WordPress themes, plugin files, and licenses used for features and functionality on a website.

We asked 30 attorneys what they like and dislike about FindLaw's legal marketing

All of this is based on our personal experience of FindLaw (both first hand and on behalf of clients) and that of current/former employees. To keep track, we conducted a round with 30 lawyers.

Note: While this article purports to show the opinions of 30, we only show 29. We received responses from 30 attorneys, but one requested a retraction due to pending litigation against FindLaw.

It's worth noting that even this summary cannot be taken as completely neutral: most of the lawyers we spoke to have FindLaw websites. We wanted to ensure that the opinions we requested came from attorneys who were (at any given time) active users of FindLaw's legal marketing solutions. This is the only way we can be sure that we are getting real opinions from real FindLaw users.

It is worth it?

tl;dr: No.

The FindLaw directory still ranks incredibly well, so a sponsored directory can be a viable option in many cases. However, I strongly encourage you to choose another provider for your website design or ongoing marketing solutions. Also a revolving door of representatives so there is no personal relationship and personal accountability.

What services would you like FindLaw to offer?

Findlaw offers almost everything I can think of. I wish there was some accountability between the optimization team and the company. Maybe an incentive program to give sales reps a reason to perform better for customers instead of making us feel like one of many getting the same product.

FindLaw Review (1-5):2

It is worth it?

tl;dr: No.

The FindLaw directory still ranks incredibly well, so a sponsored directory can be a viable option in many cases. However, I strongly encourage you to choose another provider for your website design or ongoing marketing solutions.