What is a lawyer directory?

An online legal directory is a website that provides a list of lawyers or law firms that practice in a particular field (i.e. personal injury).  A legal directory of lawyers or law firms is essentially a web-based form of yellow pages.  There are a number of online legal directories, which include the following websites:

1. Findlaw
2. Justia
3. Superlawyers
4. Avvo
5. Lawyers.com

For the purposes of this article, we will not include directories that do not typically charge lawyers or law firms a fee to appear on the directory (i.e. Chambers & Partners, Legal 500, etc).  This article will focus on legal directories that generate revenue by charging lawyers and law firms to appear on the legal directory. 

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How do legal directories work?

A lawyer director creates a separate webpage for each type of law (i.e. personal injury) and for each city or town in the United States, and then lists certain lawyers that practice in that city or town and practice in the particular area.  For example, if you were to search "San Antonio Personal Injury Lawyers", and clicked on a legal directory, you would be provided with a list of law firms or personal injury lawyers in San Antonio (along with the contact information/details of the lawyer so you can contact them).  Typically, there are also reviews for each lawyer or law firm so you can see if someone had a positive or negative experience with that lawyer or law firm.  

Lets go through a couple examples of the information you will be provided if you run the same search in Google for "Personal Injury Attorney San Antonio". 

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1.  Findlaw Results

Here are the results you will get on Findlaw:

2.  Justia Results

Here are the results you will get on Justia:

3.  Superlawyer Results

Here are the results you will get on Superlawyers:

 

4.  Avvo Results

Here are the results you will get on Avvo:

5.  Lawyers.com Results

Here are the results you will get on Lawyers.com:

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How do I choose a personal injury lawyer from a directory? 

You will have noticed that every legal directory ranks different lawyers and law firms.  How are you supposed to decide who is the right lawyer for your claim?  This is the fundamental issue with legal directories as they amount to little more than an online yellow pages for website visitors.  It can be daunting to determine what lawyer to contact from these lists if you are looking for legal services.  While it's a convenient service to list many relevant lawyers all in one spot, legal directories are not particularly helpful in providing you information with respect to who you should contact for your car accident or other accident claim and who is the best personal injury lawyer near you for your claim. 

This is where Adidem's software can help you and where it was designed to help you. 

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How are lawyers ranked on the directories?

Avvo, Findlaw, Superlawyers, Justia and Yelp ranked lawyers are typically ranked based on the fees they pay to be ranked.  For example, for a lawyer to be ranked first on Superlayers (or any of the directories), that lawyer will pay a fee to Superlawyers to appear in that ranking.  So just because a lawyer is ranked first on Avvo, Findlaw, Superlawyers, Justia or Yelp, how do you know if that lawyer is best for you?  How do you know the value of your claim or how much you will need to pay the personal injury attorney?  Paying a fee to appear first does not mean they are the best personal injury attorney.  

Online legal directories essentailly amount to a service designed to provide lead generation opportunities to lawyers.  If an attorney pays a fee to Avvo (or any other directory), that attorney is hoping you click on their profile to generate a lead. While it provides a service to quickly put you in contact with an attorney, it doesn't provide much information or assistance with respect to whether you should actually hire that attorney.  

How are lawyers reviewed on legal directories? 

The reviews lawyers receive on Avvo, Findlaw, Superlawyers, Justia or Yelp are similar to the reviews any business would obtain on Google or Amazon.  Customers that found the lawyer through the legal directory can review that lawyers.  In addition, attorneys will request that their clients provide reviews on these websites to help improve the attorney's reviews. Those reviews will give the lawyer a rating on Avvo, Findlaw, Superlawyers, Justia or Yelp.  The legal directory typically does not independently review or verify the capabilities of the lawyers they are ranking. Reviews are typically entirely based on client or user feedback.  

One unfortunate feature consistent among all of the legal directories is the lack of client reviews on their respective websites. 

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Are legal directories legitimate?

Yes.  The legal directories noted in this article provide a legitimate service connecting you to lawyers.  These directories are like any other business, and are designed to charge lawyers to appear on their site and to drive traffic to their sites so they can charge lawyers more.  In fact, some legal directories have been criticized of questionnable practices, where some would crawl law firm website in a certain category of law, add lawyers to the directory and then charge the lawyer or law firm to appear on the directory (or threaten to remove the lawyer if they did not pay).  

An online legal directory's primary customer is the lawyer.  At Adidem, we provide our service to you, the client looking for the lawyer.  Adidem's service to you is also free of charge.