A Law Firm Site Audit Built for SEO and Bar-Compliance at the Same Time

Law firm sites are the one vertical where getting SEO right and getting compliance right have to happen at the same time. The SEO side is normal (schema, structure, local signals, content). The compliance side is that "specialist" is a reserved word in most states, "guaranteed results" is prohibited in every state, "best lawyer in Dallas" is an ethics complaint waiting to happen, and testimonials usually need a disclaimer in the same visual context to satisfy the state bar.

The Law Firm Site Audit runs both layers together.

The SEO layer

Schema-first, because LegalService markup is how Google knows this is a law firm versus a general business.

• LegalService / Attorney / ProfessionalService JSON-LD. The schema.org type matters; Google treats LegalService + ProfessionalService differently from generic LocalBusiness for lawyer-locator results.
• serviceType listing practice areas ("Personal Injury", "Medical Malpractice", "Workers Compensation"). Google matches practice-area queries to this property.
• areaServed listing jurisdictions (states, counties, cities). Critical for jurisdictional relevance.
• PostalAddress with a physical office. Required for LocalBusiness eligibility.
• telephone + a tel: link. Most inquiries come by phone.

Bar credentials:

• Visible bar number on attorney bio pages and footer. Some state bars require. Trust signal regardless.
• Law school + graduation year on every attorney bio. E-E-A-T signal.
• "Admitted in" statement per attorney. State bar rule in many jurisdictions.

Third-party credential badges: Super Lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell AV, Best Lawyers, AVVO, Chambers. Each with the year + jurisdiction required for legitimacy.

The compliance-scan layer

The audit scans body text for 12 known-risky advertising phrases and flags each with the reason it's risky:

• "guaranteed" / "guaranteed results" — prohibited in every US state bar ad rule. Immediate rewrite.
• "risk free" / "100% success" — prohibited. Immediate removal.
• "specialist" — reserved in most states for ABA-certified specialists. Use "focused on" or "our practice includes" unless you're actually ABA-certified.
• "expert" — restricted in some states. Safer to use "experienced" or "attorney whose practice focuses on".
• "best lawyer" / "best attorney" / "top attorney" — superlatives without factual basis invite scrutiny. Anchor to verifiable lists (Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, Chambers) with year + jurisdiction.
• "millions recovered" — must include a "past results do not guarantee future outcomes" disclaimer per most state rules.
• "no win no fee" / "no recovery no fee" — permitted in contingency-fee jurisdictions but typically requires a "costs may apply" disclosure.

The scan is not exhaustive. It catches the common patterns. Your state bar compliance officer or outside ethics counsel should review anything sensitive.

Required disclaimers

The audit checks for the four elements most state bars require in a law firm site footer:

1. Attorney advertising notice ("Attorney advertising" or "This constitutes attorney advertising").
2. No-attorney-client-relationship statement.
3. Past-results disclaimer ("Past results do not guarantee similar outcomes").
4. Jurisdiction note (which states the attorneys are admitted in).

Missing any of these is flagged. The fix prompt emits a four-line footer template covering all four.

Testimonial handling

State bars treat testimonials as advertising, not endorsements. Most jurisdictions require a disclaimer ("Results may vary" or "Each case is unique") in the same visual context as the testimonial, not buried in a separate footer block.

The audit detects testimonial content and flags whether a same-context disclaimer is present. The fix prompt emits a testimonial pattern that satisfies common state bar rules while still converting.

The fix prompt

For each finding, the prompt asks the LLM to produce:

• Exact LegalService / Attorney JSON-LD with sample values the firm can replace.
• A bar-compliance language rewrite pass for any flagged risky phrases, with reasoning for each rewrite.
• A footer disclaimer template covering the four required elements.
• A testimonial-handling block that meets common state rules.
• A credential-badge section with year + jurisdiction formatting.
• A practice-area landing-page strategy for the two areas most visible in the current body text.
• Local SEO: Google Business Profile, AVVO, state bar lawyer-locator listings.
• Any ABA Model Rule 7.x or state-specific rule implicated by findings, flagged as "your bar counsel should review."

The one thing I cannot do for you

Offer legal advice about your own site's compliance. I flag patterns that typically trigger bar review. Your actual obligations depend on your state's specific Rules of Professional Conduct, which my tool doesn't embed. Any fix this audit recommends on a compliance-sensitive issue should be reviewed by bar counsel before deploy.

Why this audit exists

Law firms that self-audit usually do one layer (SEO) and skip the other (compliance). Firms that hire marketing agencies often do it in reverse; the agency ships SEO-optimal copy that violates a bar rule, the firm ships it, the state bar sends a letter, the firm blames the agency. The audit doing both layers at once catches the cross-concerns the single-layer tools miss.

Related reading

• Restaurant Site Audit, the adjacent vertical audit
• Trust Signal Surface Audit for the 12 structural trust artifacts
• NAP Consistency for address and phone across listings
• Platform Audit if the firm runs on Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, or Ghost

Fact-check notes and sources

• ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct 7.1 through 7.5 on lawyer advertising.
• schema.org documentation on LegalService, Attorney, and ProfessionalService types.
• California Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 1-400 on advertising (for the California-specific examples).
• New York Rules of Professional Conduct 7.1-7.5 (representative state-level variation).
• Google Search Central structured-data guidelines for professional services.

This post is informational, not legal advice, not marketing advice, and not ethics advice. Bar advertising rules vary significantly by jurisdiction. The phrase scan captures common patterns only; the absence of a flag does not mean your site is compliant. All compliance-sensitive copy should be reviewed by bar counsel or your state's ethics board before publishing.