The Power and Pitfalls of Online Legal Directories

November 13, 2020

Have you Googled yourself lately?

You will likely find your firm’s website and your LinkedIn profile. You may also find listings on many online legal directories, many of which you did not sign up for and are not sure why you are included.

You may wonder why you have a listing in these directories. In most states, the list of licensed attorneys is public record. Companies like Avvo requested those records, including discipline, and posted them online in a searchable database. Many lawyers were not happy. Many other companies followed this business model. Other directories receive information from the Secretary of State for business entities. Today, there are many databases that let the public search for lawyers by jurisdiction, name, firm name, and practice area. In many of these directories, people can publish reviews. At the least, you should know which directories you are listed in, whether the information is accurate, and seek to correct the information if it is not.

Most of the legal directories offer free and paid marketing services and ways to engage with visitors including question/answer pages, lead generation, enhanced listings and more. Some lawyers have found participation beyond the free listings to be lucrative marketing vehicles.

The Online Legal Directory Landscape

Avvo was started in 2006 by CEO Mark Britton. In 2018, Internet Brands acquired Avvo and added the company to their stable of legal directory and marketing services. Currently, the umbrella banner Martindale-Avvo includes Martindale-Hubbell, Martindale-Nolo, Avvo, and Lawyers.com. Even though all of these directories are now under the same company, each of these directories may list you or your firm in a different way. Martindale and Lawyers.com still show AV Preeminent Peer Review ratings although AV ratings designated before April 15, 2008, are not displayed.

Other legal directories such as HG.org, LawGuru.com, Findlaw.com and Justia.com all have searchable databases of attorneys. Many of the legal directories have a basic listing that you will include you whether you added yourself of not. You will want to check each directory, especially the popular ones under the Martindale-Avvo umbrella and those like Justia.

State, local, and specialty bar associations may have publicly available online directories. If you participate in a lawyer referral service through a bar association you also may have a listing. Finally, you may participate in Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, 40 Under 40, and other exclusive listings.

With all these directories, you should check to see if the listings you find for yourself and your firm are up to date and accurate. Add your picture if you can. Correct or add your address, website, phone number and email address. If your profile already exists, you may have to claim it in order to update it, but it is likely free to do so.

Google Yourself

Going to each one of these directories to check your profile can be time consuming. You could divide the list and put it on your to-do for each Monday morning until you are finished. Many marketing companies will check and update your listings for you. You could delegate it to your support team. If you do delegate this work, make sure you save the login credentials in your password manager for the account.

If you want to see what Google indexes for your name and your firm, as well as what other websites index, you could start with some searches. Not all directories are as well indexed as others, so seeing where you come up first can help prioritize your to-do list.

Do a Google search for your name (your common name and your name as appears in State Bar records, variations of your name, with your name in quotes and without) and your firm’s name. Because Google’s algorithms are influenced by what it knows about your online behavior, what type of device the search is conducted on, and IP address/location you should do this search and then:

Search without logging in
Search with someone else’s computer
Search with your phone

Do the same search with other search engines such as Yahoo!, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and StartPage if you want to be thorough. Keep in mind that there are limits to what you may find in search engine indexes. Do not forget to go a few pages deep.

After you do this initial search, you can sign up with a service to receive alerts when your name/firm’s name and variations of each one appear in search engine indexes.

Google Alerts is a free service with a Google account.
Mention.com includes a free trial and offers advanced settings to let you search variations or AND or EXCLUDE words in results. The search extends to Facebook, Twitter, News sites, blogs, video sites, forums, image sites and the general web. The search yields impressive results. You can set it up to email you results on a daily or weekly basis. A “Solo” account is $25 per month.
Giga Alert is somewhat secretive about where they search and offers “deep results” for $4.95 a month.

Ethical Issues

In the past two years, the North Carolina State Bar has issued or proposed several ethics opinions that speak directly to lawyers’ listings in online directories. These include 2018 Formal Ethics Opinion 8 (Advertising Inclusion In Self-Laudatory List Or Organization) and 2018 Formal Ethics Opinion 1 (Participation in Website Directories and Rating Systems That Include Third-Party Reviews). Because many of the online legal directories, as well as other business directories, allow an individual to post a review of a lawyer’s services, you should also read and consider proposed 2020 FEO 1 (Responding to Negative Online Reviews). The summaries below are not a substitution for reading the ethics opinions in their entirety.

Participation in Website Directories and Rating Systems That Include Third-Party Reviews

Adopted on July 27, 2018, this ethics opinion provides a lot to unpack. The opinion, with multiple hypotheticals, explains when a lawyer may participate in an online rating system, and a lawyer’s professional responsibility for the content posted on a profile on a website directory.

Below is a summary of the opinion as it relates specifically to participation in website directories:

Throughout the opinion, lawyers are reminded that what they submit must be truthful and not misleading.
You may claim your profile on a website like Avvo or Findlaw if the information is truthful and not misleading.
You may pay “reasonable costs of advertisements” to be included in an online directory as an advertising fee. However, you cannot pay for a rating.
For online directories that provide ratings, a lawyer must determine that the rating system uses objective standards that are verifiable. Additionally, the “standards for the rating system must be disclosed to the public at a location on the website that a user of the website can readily find.”
For listings in directories like Super Lawyers, “a lawyer may not participate in such a directory unless objective, verifiable standards for participation are applied and disclosed by the website.”
You can claim your profile on a site that lets consumers post reviews and may ask present or former clients to post reviews on your profile page if there is no quid pro quo. It should go without saying that “under no circumstances may a lawyer solicit, encourage, or assist in the posting of fake, false, or misleading reviews.”
Further, a lawyer is not responsible for language used by the client like “my lawyer is the best” and does not need to seek removal of the review as “most users of the Internet understand that reviews by third parties generally contain statements of opinion, not fact.” If “a review contains a material misstatement of objective fact, however, the lawyer must take action to have the review removed or edited to delete the misstatement, or to post a disclaimer.”
If you cannot get the material misstatements removed from your listing, you “must withdraw from participation on the website and seek to have [your] page on the website removed.”
If you get a negative review in an online directory, you do not have to seek its correction or removal since a negative review is not misleading.
Finally, if you have the option to pay for a pro account, you may do so if an explanation of “pro” appears in a prominent location beside or near the designation. If that explanation is not disclosed, you must discontinue the use of the service. If, in the pro subscription, you have an option to only allow selected reviews to be viewed, there must be an explanation that the lawyer has selected the best reviews to promote.

Advertising Inclusion in Self-Laudatory List or Organization

This ethics opinion, adopted on October 25, 2019, rules that a lawyer may advertise the lawyer’s inclusion in a list or membership in an organization that bestows a laudatory designation on the lawyer subject to certain conditions. A previous opinion, 2007 FEO 14 (Advertising Inclusion in List in North Carolina Super Lawyers and Other Similar Publications), was withdrawn by the State Bar Council upon this opinion’s release.

While you are allowed to have a listing in a directory that describes you as “best” or “super,” and you may advertise your inclusion in these directories, there are some conditions outlined by the opinion. To summarize:

First, no compensation may be paid by you or your firm, for the award or accolade being bestowed or for inclusion in the group or listing. As such, the accolade, award, or inclusion is misleading in violation of Rule 7.1(a) because it is bestowed, at least in part, because of a lawyer’s willingness and ability to pay, and not for reasons that are objective, verifiable, and bona fide. The opinion clarifies that “after the award, accolade, or inclusion has been granted, a lawyer may pay the reasonable costs of advertisements concerning the inclusion.”
Second, before advertising your inclusion in a self-laudatory list or organization, you must ascertain that the organization conferring the award is a bona fide organization and that the selection methodology must be based upon objective, verifiable, and consistently applied factors.
Third, any advertisement by you of your inclusion in a self-laudatory group or list must also contain an explanation of the standards for inclusion or provide the consumer with information on how to obtain the inclusion standards. If you advertise your inclusion in a self-laudatory list, the advertisement must indicate the year(s) in which you received the award or were a member of the organization.

Non-legal Business Directories

In addition to the many legal focused online directories, you may have a listing in a national or local business directory. Like the legal directories, you may have a listing that you did not submit. You should identify, review, and update your listing in these directories. Major players include Yelp, Better Business Bureau, GoogleMyBusiness, Bing Places, YP.com, and Apple Maps.

In addition to the national business directories, there are many local directories. Mark Homer, writing for Attorney at Work, outlines a strategy for adding your listing, including aggregators that make it easy to get listed in many directories at the same time.

Conclusion

So many directories, so little time. If you are wondering why you should bother, consider a.) your reputation may be harmed by what you do not know is out there about you, b.) you need to be aware of listings to comply with Rules of Professional Conduct and ethics opinions and c.) you will get greater exposure online for free or very low cost. According to the 2019 Legal Trends Report from Clio, 57% of consumers responding to the survey indicated that they searched online for a lawyer. Do not discount the power of online directories for your internet presence!

Catherine Sanders Reach is director of the North Carolina Bar Association Center for Practice Management.