You can evaluate a legal SEO (search engine optimization) agency with four checks:
- Whether it can name the advertising rules its work has to meet
- Whether it can show law firm results you can verify yourself
- Whether your firm keeps the website and content it builds
- Whether it reports on signed cases, not traffic alone
Compliance Comes Before Rankings
The advertising-rules check carries the most weight, because copy on a firm’s website is the firm’s own communication. Each state sets its own lawyer advertising rules, and most build on the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The ABA’s state-by-state comparison charts show where each state departs from them, and your own state’s rules control.
Under the ABA’s model advertising rule, a lawyer may not make false or misleading statements about their services. A page that gets an important fact or legal point wrong breaks that rule, even if an outside writer drafted it.
Who Is Responsible If Your SEO Agency Breaks an Advertising Rule?
Usually the lawyer, sometimes on two fronts. Rule 5.3 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct covers nonlawyers a firm hires or works with, which can include an outside marketing agency. It ties a lawyer to the agency’s work in three ways:
- Supervision: Lawyers who manage the firm, or who directly supervise the agency’s work, must make reasonable efforts to keep that work in line with the lawyer’s professional duties.
- Ordering or approving it: A lawyer is answerable for agency conduct that would break the professional rules if the lawyer ordered it, or ratified it (approved it after the fact) knowing what it involves.
- Failing to step in: A managing or supervising lawyer is answerable if they learn of the conduct while the harm can still be avoided or reduced and take no reasonable step to fix it.
Federal law adds a separate exposure. Section 45 of Title 15 of the United States Code lets the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) seek civil penalties, per violation, from a business that knowingly breaks one of its rules on unfair or deceptive practices.
Indemnity language (a contract clause that shifts costs to the agency) moves money, not a lawyer’s professional duty, so a review step inside the firm still matters.
Can an SEO Agency Write or Buy Reviews and Testimonials for Your Firm?
No. Federal rules treat fake reviews, and rewards given only for positive ones, as deceptive practices by the business the reviews are about.
Under the FTC’s rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, a business may not write, create, or sell a review that materially misrepresents the reviewer or the reviewer’s experience. It also may not buy a review, or spread a testimonial, that it knew or should have known was false in that way.
The same rule bars any payment or other reward given in exchange for, or conditioned on, a review with a particular slant. Offering clients a gift card only if they leave a five-star review falls inside it.
Some states also set their own testimonial rules, such as labeling a testimonial and disclosing any payment behind it.
How to Test an Agency’s Legal Content Process
Legal accuracy is easy to promise and harder to show, so ask how an agency’s pages get made:
- Who drafts each page, who edits it, and who reads it before it goes live?
- Can you see a published page where each legal statement names the law it rests on?
- What happens to a page that already ranks when the law it describes changes?
An agency that cannot say who reviews each page is asking the firm to publish unchecked legal statements.
What Results Should a Legal SEO Agency Be Able to Show?
A legal SEO agency should be able to name law firm clients who will take your call and show the searches those firms rank for today.
A firm grows on signed cases, so useful reporting traces a search to a call and a call to a signed case. That is why measuring law firm marketing by conversions and cost per new client tells you more than a traffic chart does. At Growth Lab, our client platform shows which online channels bring the firm new clients, not only rankings and visits.
Which Agency Promises Are Red Flags for a Law Firm?
Some sales promises sound like strengths but signal trouble, because no agency controls the outcome or the copy would break your own rules:
| What the agency promises | Why it is a problem |
|---|---|
| Top rankings guaranteed by a set date | Google’s own guidance on hiring an SEO says no one can guarantee a top ranking on Google. |
| Website copy that tells potential clients what result they will get (“we will win your case”) | Under the ABA’s model advertising rule, results presented in a way that creates an unjustified expectation for other clients can be misleading. |
| Website copy that says your firm is better than other firms | Under the same model rule, a comparison with other lawyers that cannot be backed up can be misleading. |
| A fast boost in five-star reviews | Buying fake reviews, or rewarding clients only for positive ones, runs into the FTC’s review rule. |
A credible agency promises the work, the reporting, and honest recommendations instead.
A Due-Diligence Checklist Before You Sign
Before signing, get these commitments from the agency in writing:
- The advertising rules its work follows, named by rule number for your state
- A step for the firm’s own attorney to approve each page before it goes live
- Ownership terms keeping the domain, website, content, and analytics accounts in the firm’s name, including what transfers at the end and in what format
- A definition of results based on signed cases and the searches behind them
Choosing a Legal SEO Agency You Can Stand Behind
Hiring an agency, or replacing one that let you down, means trusting someone else with copy that carries your name. The right choice is one whose work you could explain to your state bar.
Growth Lab focuses on law firm SEO, and our work has generated more than $100 million in tracked legal services revenue for law firm clients. Our case studies name firms we have worked with, including Tim Rusk Attorneys, whose calls rose 2,400% in 16 months.
Every engagement starts with a discovery call. If we are not confident we can help a firm reach its goals, we say so and suggest another route. Either way, you leave with recommendations for your firm.
Before you sign with any legal SEO agency, contact us or call [phonenumber] to schedule a discovery call.
