How clients choose a law firm online comes down to four stages: they search Google and read reviews, compare two or three firm websites on a phone, often ask an AI assistant, and then contact the firm that feels safest to call. You lose clients at whichever stage is weakest, so find that stage first. The usual weak spots are the Google Business Profile and reviews, practice-area pages that don't answer the client's question, and calls or forms nobody answers after 5 pm.
Someone is served with divorce papers on a Tuesday. That evening they search for a lawyer on their phone, read reviews for the three firms in the map, open two websites, maybe ask ChatGPT who’s good locally, and fill in a form. By Wednesday lunch they’ve booked a consultation. The firms that lost never find out they were in the running.
That’s how clients choose a law firm online now, and every stage of it happens before anyone at your firm talks to them. This guide walks through each stage as a prospective client sees it, and what to fix at each one. It isn’t legal advice on advertising rules: your state bar has the final word on those, and we’ll point out where.
How clients choose a law firm online: the four stages
Each stage filters the list. A firm that doesn’t show in the map is never compared. A firm whose site leaves the client guessing about cost is rarely called. Fix the stage where you drop out first, then move down the path.
Stage 1: The Google search, the map pack and your reviews
Most legal searches with a place in them (“divorce lawyer near me”, “DUI attorney Columbus”) show a map with three firms before any website. Google ranks those results on relevance (how well your profile matches the search), distance from the searcher, and prominence, which includes links to your site and your review count and ratings. It also says you can’t pay for a better local ranking (Google Business Profile Help).
Lawyers have extra rules here. Google treats lawyers as “individual practitioners” and spells out how their listings should work (Google’s guidelines for representing your business):
- Use your real name. The profile name must match the firm’s real-world name. Adding “Best Divorce Lawyer Austin” to it breaks the guidelines, and Google says extra words in a name can get the profile suspended.
- One profile per lawyer, not per specialty. A practitioner shouldn’t have several profiles to cover different practice areas, and support staff shouldn’t have their own.
- A lawyer who is the only public-facing practitioner at a branded firm should share one profile with the firm, named “[firm]: [lawyer name]”.
- Real offices only. A virtual office (an address you rent for mail but don’t work from) isn’t eligible for a Business Profile, so you can’t add one in a city you’d like to rank in.
Then reviews. You can ask every client for one, with a direct link or QR code from your profile. Google’s content policy doesn’t allow reviews given in exchange for incentives (Google Maps content policy). Your state bar may also have rules or opinions on how lawyers ask for reviews, so check those too.
In FindLaw's 2024 U.S. Consumer Legal Needs Survey of 2,000 adults with a recent legal need, 82% of those who contacted an attorney they learned about online said they relied on online reviews (FindLaw). FindLaw sells marketing to law firms, so read it as a vendor survey.
Replying is where lawyers differ from other businesses. Google encourages replies, but your duty of confidentiality limits what you can say. The ABA’s Formal Opinion 496 says a negative online review alone doesn’t allow a lawyer to reveal client information, and suggests options such as not responding, inviting the person to contact you privately, or saying that “professional obligations do not allow me to respond as I would wish” (ABA Formal Opinion 496).
Never confirm in a review reply that the reviewer was your client, or mention anything about their matter, even to correct an unfair review. Thank people for positive reviews in general terms, and keep replies to negative ones short and free of facts.
If you have several offices, each one needs its own profile and its own page on your site. Our local SEO service covers that setup.
Why Google holds a law firm website to a higher standard
Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines describe “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) topics: topics that could significantly affect people’s health, financial stability or safety, or society. Pages on clear YMYL topics get the most scrutiny (Search Quality Rater Guidelines). The guidelines don’t list law as its own category, but most legal questions fit the definition. A wrong answer about a filing deadline, a custody arrangement or a visa can cost someone money, time or safety.
The same guidelines rate pages on experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust (E-E-A-T), and call trust the most important of the four. They tell raters to research the reputation of content creators, and to expect more formal reputation information for people who write in a “traditionally professional capacity”, where degrees, credentials and employment history count as evidence. Raters don’t set rankings, but their guidelines show what Google’s systems are built to reward.
For a law firm website, that means pages written or reviewed by a named attorney, credentials a reader can check, current information about your state’s law, and clear contact details. Our guide to E-E-A-T and user experience goes deeper on how trust shows up in design.
Stage 2: Comparing firms on their websites
The same FindLaw survey found that nearly nine in ten people who searched online visited at least two websites before contacting an attorney. Your site is judged next to the firms that ranked beside you, usually on a phone.
A common weak spot is the practice-area page. It lists services in the firm’s language (“We handle all aspects of family law”) and never answers what the client actually wants to know: how long this takes, what it might cost, what happens next and who will handle it.
What each part should do:
- Practice-area pages that answer the real question. One page per practice area, opening with a plain answer to the question that brought the client there, then the process, a realistic timeline and common questions.
- Attorney bios with credentials. Bar admissions with state and year, education, the practice areas each attorney handles, and publications. Link each practice page to its attorney.
- Clear fees or consultation information. You don’t have to publish rates. Do say whether the first consultation is free or paid, how long it takes, and what to bring.
- Speed and mobile. Click-to-call, text readable without zooming, and fast pages on a phone connection. Our Core Web Vitals audit guide shows how to measure it.
Showing results within the ethics rules
Lawyer advertising is regulated by each state’s bar, and most states base their rules on the ABA Model Rules. Model Rule 7.1 bars false or misleading communications about a lawyer’s services, and its comment warns that a truthful report of past results can still mislead if it creates an unjustified expectation that other clients will get the same result (ABA Model Rule 7.1, comment). Model Rule 7.2 says a lawyer can’t claim to be a certified specialist unless the certifying organization is approved by the state or accredited by the ABA and is named in the communication (ABA Model Rule 7.2).
States go further in different directions. Some require specific disclaimers next to case results, some restrict testimonials, and some limit the word “specialist” or “expert”. Before you publish verdicts, settlements, client quotes or “specialist” anywhere, check your state bar’s rules and have someone at the firm sign off.
Stage 3: Asking ChatGPT and other AI assistants
Some clients now ask an assistant “Who’s a good employment lawyer in Denver?” before they search, or instead of searching. Assistants with web search build their answer from what they find: firm websites, directory and bar listings, reviews and news. If those sources disagree about your firm or say little, the assistant has less reason to name you.
- The same facts everywhere. Firm name, offices, phone numbers and practice areas should match across your site, Business Profile, bar listing and the legal directories you use.
- Pages that answer questions directly. Our guide to answer engine optimization covers how to write for it.
- Crawlers allowed in. Check that your robots.txt doesn’t block the crawlers AI search tools use. Our robots.txt validator tests it.
- Structured data that states the facts. Mark up the firm as a LegalService (schema.org now treats the older Attorney type as deprecated) and each lawyer as a Person with their credentials. Our free schema generator builds a starting block (choose Local Business, then enter LegalService as the business type). Schema won’t make an assistant recommend you, but it makes your facts easier to read correctly. More in schema for AI visibility.
The simplest test is to ask. Our AI Visibility Checker asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude your clients’ questions and shows whether they name your firm, who they name instead and which sources they cite. The free readiness check includes one live answer; the full check uses credits from a free account.
Stage 4: The call, the form and the after-hours gap
Everything above earns you a call or a form. Legal problems don’t keep office hours, and a person who reaches voicemail at 7 pm can simply call the next firm on the list.
- Calls. Make the phone number tappable on every page. Decide what happens after hours: an answering service, a call-back promise with a time, or online booking.
- Forms. Keep them short: name, phone, email, practice area and a brief description. Add a note asking people not to send confidential details, and stating that submitting the form doesn’t create an attorney-client relationship. Your firm approves the wording.
- Response time. Decide who replies to web inquiries and how fast. Under the ABA Model Rules, replying to someone who contacted you first isn’t solicitation (ABA Model Rule 7.3, comment). Cold outreach is a different matter, so check your state’s version.
Test this yourself once a quarter. Call the firm at 6:30 pm, fill in your own form on a phone, and time the reply.
What to fix this month
If the problem is the website itself (slow, hard to edit, no room for proper practice and attorney pages), see how we build law firm websites.
FAQs
How do most people find a lawyer online?
Most start with a search engine, look at the map results and reviews, and then compare a few firm websites before they call. In FindLaw’s 2024 survey, 97% of people who searched online for information about the attorney they contacted used a search engine.
Can lawyers respond to negative Google reviews?
Yes, but carefully. ABA Formal Opinion 496 says a negative review doesn’t allow a lawyer to reveal client information, and suggests not responding, inviting the reviewer to talk privately, or saying that professional obligations prevent a full response. Your state’s rules and ethics opinions apply, so check them before you reply.
Can we put case results and testimonials on our law firm website?
It depends on your state. The ABA Model Rules allow truthful results but warn against creating unjustified expectations, and many states require disclaimers or restrict testimonials. Check your state bar’s advertising rules before you publish them.
Does schema markup help a law firm get recommended by ChatGPT?
It helps AI tools and search engines read your facts correctly, such as practice areas, offices and attorney credentials. It doesn’t make an assistant recommend you on its own. Consistent information across your site, profiles and directories, and pages that answer real questions, matter more.
Sources
- Guidelines for representing your business on Google, Google Business Profile Help
- Tips to improve your local ranking on Google, Google Business Profile Help
- Incentivized or biased reviews, Maps user-generated content policy
- Search Quality Rater Guidelines, Google, September 2025
- ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct: Rule 7.1, Rule 7.2 and Rule 7.3, American Bar Association
- Formal Opinion 496: Responding to online criticism, American Bar Association, January 2021
- Key takeaways from the 2024 U.S. Consumer Legal Needs Survey, FindLaw
