10 Best Lead Generation Services for Lawyers

Lead generation services can be a great marketing channel for lawyers to acquire new clients. Compared to SEO, social media, or other types of advertising, buying leads is probably one of the fastest and easiest ways to get more clients for your firm. After all, attracting qualified leads for your law firm can be time-consuming. But you should only do it if you’re ready to handle an influx of new business and capitalize on the leads you receive.

In this post, we review the top 10 best lead generation services for lawyers, including how each service works, what practice areas they serve, and info about their pricing.

And of course, make sure you’ve signed up for Clio Grow to ensure smooth intake for all your new leads. Book a demo to see it in action.

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Avvo Review for Lawyers

Avvo is one of the largest and most trafficked websites in the entire legal industry, with over 8 million monthly visitors. They use a variety of online marketing methods (sometimes unpopular ones) to attract people with legal issues to their website.

Their website includes a free legal Q&A service where people can get basic answers to their legal questions from real attorneys, as well as an attorney directory and other helpful legal articles and guides. But, Avvo’s biggest selling point for consumers is probably its lawyer reviews.

As much as lawyers may not like the idea of being reviewed, these days, online reviews are prevalent in all industries. Consumers just want that extra layer of trust before buying products and services, which is why building up positive online reviews is an incredibly important part of your marketing plan.

On the attorney marketing side, Avvo boasts over 650,000 contacts made between prospective clients and an attorney every month, making it one of the most effective and widely used lead generation services in the legal industry. Avvo was acquired by Internet Brands and is now part of the Martindale Legal Marketing Network.

How Avvo Works

Avvo is a very robust platform offering a variety of services for clients as well as marketing solutions for attorneys. Each one is explained below.

Lawyer profile

Avvo automatically generates an “unclaimed” lawyer profile for every licensed attorney by using publicly available information from the State Bar. So, even if you’ve never visited Avvo’s website, you probably have a profile there.

You can claim your profile for free and start updating your bio and getting reviews. Your profile will be discoverable in the lawyer directory.

Client reviews

Each lawyer profile also includes an area for clients or other attorneys to leave reviews. People can rate an attorney on a 5-star scale and write a description of their experience working with the attorney.

Both the reviews and the average star rating are prominently displayed on each attorney profile, as well as in the lawyer directory and search results.

Avvo rating

Each Avvo profile also includes a rating from 1-10. The rating is based mostly on your usage of Avvo rather than your merit or experience as an attorney, which made it a particularly unpopular move within the legal industry early on.

However, lawyers have gradually started embracing the concept of the Avvo rating, and many are now using it to their advantage from a marketing standpoint. After all, when a prospective client finds your Avvo profile and sees a perfect 10/10 rating, there is an immediate sense of credibility.

Attorney websites and advertising services

In addition to lawyer profiles, online reviews, and the Avvo rating, Avvo also offers a variety of lawyer advertising services to help lawyers get more exposure on the Avvo website and show up at the top of the lawyer directory pages.

These services include display ads as well as custom websites which can be linked up to an Avvo profile to more easily monitor the effectiveness of your overall Avvo marketing strategy.

Practice areas

• All practice areas served

Avvo pricing

• Basic Avvo profile – Free
  • Claim your profile, update your bio information, answer questions in the Q&A forum
• Avvo Premium – $100/month +
  • Includes enhanced search discoverability, more prominent contact information, conversion tracking, and more profile customization
• Avvo Advertising – $100/month +
  • Targeted display ads and sponsored listings across various places on the Avvo network (can boost contacts by 70x)
• Avvo Websites – $200/month +
  • Avvo will build and host a custom website for your firm and link it to your Avvo profile

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Expertise Review for Lawyers

Expertise helps you find local professionals, including those looking for lawyers or legal services. Every month they help over 1 million customers find the best qualified service professional for their needs.

How Expertise works

Expertise has reputation, qualification, and experience requirements for those listed on their directory. You can fill out their request for review form to submit a business for review.

Practice areas

• All major practice areas covered

Different plans

• Enhanced Layout: Includes your headshot, logo, service tags, and additional content.
• Featured Placement: Includes Enhanced plus a premium placement at the top of their page.
• Business profile: Includes Enhanced plus a custom profile page with images/video, customer testimonial, and personalized content.

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Nolo Review for Lawyers

Nolo started off as an independent source for free legal information and do-it-yourself legal guides over 40 years ago. It was acquired in 2011 by Internet Brands and made part of the Martindale Legal Marketing Network.

Today, Nolo operates a number of different legal content websites, including its main site Nolo.com, as well as practice area-specific sites like PersonalInjuryLawyer.com and CriminalDefenseLawyer.com.

The Nolo network is one of the biggest sources of free legal information online and receives millions of visitors a month. Of these visitors, 100,000 or more request to speak with an attorney.

How Nolo works

Nolo primarily uses SEO (search engine optimization) techniques to drive targeted traffic to its websites. These websites have thousands of articles on a wide variety of topics, and they primarily attract people who are researching their legal issues online.

For example, when someone goes to Google and types in a query like “DUI penalties in California,” there is a good chance that Nolo will have a relevant article on this topic which will rank highly in the search results.

Alongside each article, Nolo displays attorney profiles from its network, as well as a call to action to “speak with an attorney,” which is how Nolo captures the contact information of its leads.

These leads are then sold to attorneys within the same geographic location and practice area for a flat fee. Nolo offers exclusive access to leads, as well as shared access where multiple attorneys are sold the same lead.

Exclusive leads are probably more likely to convert into clients, but the tradeoff is that they are also more expensive.

Practice areas

• All major practice areas covered
• Most popular:
  • Bankruptcy
  • Criminal Defense
  • DUI
  • Disability
  • Divorce
  • Employment
  • Estate Planning
  • Immigration
  • Personal Injury
  • Workers’ Comp

Nolo Pricing

• Not publicly available (Depends on practice area, geographic location, and whether leads are exclusive or shared)
  • Estimated price ranges per lead:
    • Bankruptcy $10-60
    • Personal Injury $20-100+ (depending on injuries)
    • Divorce $20-40
    • DUI $50-100
    • Criminal Defense $20-60
    • Estate Planning $20-40

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FindLaw Review for Lawyers

FindLaw was one of the first online lawyer directories in the early days of the World Wide Web. They were acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2001 and have since grown to become one of the top legal marketing and lead generation services for lawyers.

They offer online legal Q&A forums, lawyer directories, and free legal guides and articles for consumers. For attorneys, they offer various marketing services, including paid advertising, lead generation, PPC campaign management, and website development and hosting.

Much like Martindale, FindLaw is a network of multiple websites, most notably FindLaw.com, SuperLawyers.com, and LawInfo.com.

How FindLaw Works

Similar to the Martindale Legal Marketing Network, FindLaw has taken somewhat of a one-stop shop approach to legal marketing. Below are the primary services they offer.

Lawyer Profile and Directory Listing

FindLaw drives traffic to its website via a variety of methods, including SEO and PPC advertising. All of their free legal content encourages visitors to search for an attorney for additional help using their lawyer directory.

The lawyer directory is the core feature of FindLaw for consumers. Attorneys can pay for a premium listing in the directory to ensure that they show up at the top of the search results when someone looks for an attorney within that practice area and location.

Lead Generation

Much like Nolo, FindLaw offers a pay-per-lead service for a wide variety of practice areas. There are a couple of key differences between FindLaw and Nolo in terms of their approach to lead generation however.

Unlike Nolo, which focuses mainly on content and SEO, FindLaw uses targeted online advertising to attract leads to landing pages. They capture leads from these pages with a basic contact form and then sell it to an attorney within the appropriate practice area and geographic location.

Also, another differentiator is that FindLaw leads are always exclusive and never shared, whereas Nolo offers some leads on a shared basis. This is an advantage when it comes to getting conversions, but you can expect to pay a higher cost per lead.

PPC Campaign Management

FindLaw is unique from some of the other lead generation services for lawyers in that it also provides direct advertising services on behalf of law firms. So rather than driving all the traffic to their own lead generation platform, FindLaw will run ads on Google for your law firm and drive the traffic directly to your own website.

This is an additional service on top of lead generation and the lawyer directory, but PPC advertising can be another important piece of your overall online marketing strategy. Learn more about how it works in our guide on PPC basics for lawyers.

Attorney Websites, Content Creation, and Other Services

Since FindLaw aspires to be your one-stop marketing shop, they also offer website development, content creation, blogging, social media, etc.

Once again, these services are supplemental offerings in addition to lead generation and a directory listing. But, if you really want to grow your firm, you would be wise to implement a more comprehensive marketing strategy and use a multitude of channels to attract clients online.

FindLaw makes this easy by offering solution packages that bundle many of these marketing services together for a single monthly fee.

Practice Areas

• All major practice areas covered
• Most popular:
  • Bankruptcy
  • Criminal Defense
  • DUI
  • Estate Planning
  • Divorce
  • Disability
  • Immigration
  • Personal Injury
  • Workers’ Comp

FindLaw Pricing

• Premium Lawyer Profile – $125/month
• Lead Generation (varies by practice area and location)
  • Estimated price ranges per lead:
    • Bankruptcy $10-60
    • Personal Injury $20-100+ (depending on injuries)
    • Divorce $20-40
    • DUI $50-100
    • Criminal Defense $20-60
    • Estate Planning $20-40
• PPC Management (varies by campaign)
• Website and Other Services (request a custom quote)

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Unbundled Attorney Review for Lawyers

Unbundled Attorney is a newer player in the world of pay-per-lead services for attorneys. They are a small company with a unique approach to lead generation.

Their major differentiator is that they only work with attorneys that offer unbundled legal services, i.e. flat fee, limited scope services to help clients with specific tasks. They also only serve certain practice areas, since not all types of legal services lend themselves to unbundling. (You can learn more on their podcast, where they interview the attorneys from their network.)

They only offer leads on an exclusive basis and have limits on the number of attorneys they work with in any given region so attorneys can count on a more consistent volume of leads. The other unique part of their service is that they seek to provide greater education to the leads they acquire, which in turn produces better quality leads and a higher conversion rate for the attorneys.

How Unbundled Attorney Works

Unbundled Attorney uses PPC advertising on both Google and social media platforms to attract prospective clients with legal issues to their landing pages.

They take a very educational approach to their marketing, explaining to each lead what unbundled services are and how they work and providing them with an estimated range of the typical cost of the services.

The fact that they communicate the nature and cost of the legal services upfront is most likely one of the main reasons why Unbundled Attorney has developed a reputation for having the highest converting leads for the practice areas that they serve.

Practice Areas

• Family Law
• Immigration
• Estate Planning
• Bankruptcy

Unbundled Attorney Pricing

• Not publicly available (Depends on practice area and location)
  • Estimated price per lead: $50-100

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Lawyers.com Review for Lawyers

Lawyers.com is another major lawyer directory website, boasting over 1 million lawyer and law firm profiles. Originally it was a part of Martindale-Hubbell, but has since merged into the Internet Brands portfolio along with Nolo, TotalAttorneys, and Avvo.

Lawyers.com offers a wealth of free legal information, including articles and blogs about the most common legal issues. They also have a Q&A center where people can ask questions and get replies from real lawyers. Finally, they have a lawyer search feature and lawyer reviews to help people find the right lawyer to work with and get in touch.

How Lawyers.com Works

Lawyers.com attracts visitors to its website via SEO and advertising. It also has a very memorable brand name and domain, which is easy for consumers to remember.

When people go to the Lawyers.com website, they are immediately prompted with a search box where they can browse by legal issue, lawyer name, or location.

Based on their query, they are taken to a search results page of matching lawyer profiles, including an overall review/rating similar to Avvo’s. Each lawyer profile has a photo, firm name, and location, and an easy way to get in touch via phone, email, or website.

Lawyers pay a monthly fee to have a premium lawyer profile listing that shows up high in the search results. Because they are all under the same umbrella as Internet Brands, when you sign up for Lawyers.com, you also get exposure on the other Internet Brands websites, including Nolo and Martindale.com.

Practice Areas

• All major practice areas covered
• Most popular:
  • Bankruptcy
  • Business
  • Criminal Defense/DUI/Traffic
  • Estate Planning
  • Family Law
  • Intellectual Property
  • Social Security/Disability
  • Immigration
  • Real Estate/Foreclosures
  • Personal Injury
  • Workers’ Comp

Lawyers.com Pricing

• Not publicly available (Depends on practice area and location)
  • Estimated price ranges per lead:
    • Bankruptcy $10-60
    • Personal Injury $20-100+ (depending on injuries)
    • Divorce $20-40
    • DUI $50-100
    • Criminal Defense $20-60
    • Estate Planning $20-40

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Thumbtack Review for Lawyers

Thumbtack operates on a different model from the other legal leads services on this list. They are a comprehensive online marketplace to connect consumers with any kind of service professional, from DJs, to painters, to attorneys.

Thumbtack has raised hundreds of millions of dollars of funding and has a valuation in the billions, so it’s also a much larger company than the others.

How Thumbtack Works for Lawyers

You start off by creating a profile for your law firm on Thumbtack’s website. You can do this for free.

Thumbtack uses a variety of marketing strategies from advertising to content to social media to drive people to its website. They also already have millions of users who know about Thumbtack and use it on a repeat-basis for finding service providers.

When a consumer visits the Thumbtack site looking for legal help, they are prompted with specific questionnaires depending on the type of law. This creates a job posting, and the info is automatically sent out to attorneys within the right practice area and location.

You have the chance to review the job posting, and if you’re interested, you can pay to get in touch with the prospect and send a quote.

Practice Areas

• Consumer Law
• Contracts
• Corporate Law
• Disability
• DUI
• Estate Planning
• Immigration
• Intellectual Property
• International Law
• Labor and Employment
• Document Preparation
• Mediation
• Personal Injury
• Real Estate
• Tax
• Traffic

Thumbtack Pricing for Lawyers

• Not publicly available (Depends on type of service and level of interaction that occurs with the prospect, e.g. Instant Match costs more since the prospect has already engaged with you)
  • Estimated pricing $10-150 per lead

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Lawyer.com Review for Lawyers

Lawyer.com, not to be confused with Lawyers.com, is an independent company and not part of the Internet Brands empire. Unlike some of the other lead generation services, they have services in all major legal markets worldwide, including Canada, the UK, China, India, and many others.

They provide a variety of services for consumers, including a lawyer directory, free legal Q&A section, free legal content, and a legal plan.

For attorneys, they provide a multitude of marketing services, including a lawyer directory listing, websites, and PPC ad campaign management on Google.

How Lawyer.com Works

Lawyer.com offers a large array of services, each described below.

Premium Lawyer Profile and Directory Listing

The core of their offering is a premium lawyer profile in the lawyer directory, which includes visibility in the lawyer search results and listings on various other content pages.

Much like Avvo, FindLaw, and Lawyers.com, those who pay the most to be featured will show up highest in the search results for relevant queries.

Enhanced Promotion of the Lawyer Profile

They also offer some enhanced promotion services, with featured positioning for a limited number of lawyers.

These services are more expensive, but they can help ensure that you get the maximum exposure possible.

PPC Campaign Management

Similar to FindLaw, Lawyer.com offers an additional advertising service where they’ll manage your own PPC ad campaigns on Google.

Again, rather than attracting lawyer search traffic to their own lawyer directory, they will direct it to your law firm website, ensuring you get all the attention.

Website Development and Hosting

Lawyer.com also offers website development, maintenance, and hosting for law firms for an additional monthly fee.

It’s certainly more expensive than any of the DIY website builders, but it can be advantageous to have all your marketing under one roof.

Practice Areas

• All major practice areas covered

Lawyer.com Pricing

• Premium lawyer profile listing – $119/month
  • Enhanced promotion as a “County Leader” – $250/month
  • Enhanced promotion as a “Statewide Authority” – $999/month
• PPC Google ads management – $99/month
• Web Development and hosting – $99/month

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LegalMatch Review for Lawyers

LegalMatch is another independent provider of attorney leads with a slightly different approach than some of the others.

They operate on more of a marketplace model like Thumbtack, matching clients and attorneys together, rather than a lawyer search/directory model. They also price their services with a monthly membership rather than a per-lead fee.

How LegalMatch Works

LegalMatch uses a combination of SEO and advertising to drive targeted website traffic from people researching legal issues or looking for lawyers.

They have a law library with over 7,500 pieces of helpful legal information, which attracts a steady stream of traffic from organic search results. They also have a dozen other practice area-specific websites with additional content.

In addition to SEO, they utilize PPC and search engine marketing to get even more potential clients coming to their website.

Once a prospective client with a legal issue reaches the LegalMatch website, they are filtered through a series of intake questionnaires based on their needs. This creates a “case” in the system which is sent out to matching attorneys for review.

As an attorney, you can review the person’s case information and reach out to them if you’re interested. Or you can quickly “decline” a case to remove it from view.

LegalMatch does not disclose their pricing and it varies by practice area and location, but it is reportedly quite expensive compared to the other providers listed.

Practice Areas

• Family
• Criminal Defense
• Personal Injury
• Business
• Bankruptcy
• Immigration
• Employment
• Real estate
• Intellectual Property
• Wills, Trusts, & Estates

LegalMatch Pricing

• $4,000-30,000/year on average (up to $75,000/year in some cities)
• Usually requires a 3-year commitment

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LegalZoom Review for Lawyers

LegalZoom has been a household name in the legal technology industry since it was founded back in 2001.

Their primary service offerings are do-it-yourself legal filings and documents. They have a system of online questionnaires that helps walk consumers through the process of drafting their own basic contracts, estate plans, or doing their own business filings.

However, since LegalZoom is not a law firm and is not legally able to provide legal advice to its customers, they have also started offering a paid legal subscription plan in recent years, which gives access to a network of attorneys who provide consultations and handle more complex services beyond the basic DIY offerings.

How LegalZoom Works for Lawyers

LegalZoom has two different service offerings for attorneys, explained below.

Attorney Directory

Lawyers can join the LegalZoom attorney directory for free and gain exposure to LegalZoom’s large customer base of legal plan subscribers.

When a service need arises that falls outside the scope of the legal plan, the client will be referred to an attorney within the network. There is no fee-splitting or referral fee involved. The only requirement is that you discount your normal rates by 25% for these clients.

Legal Plan Network

The LegalZoom legal plan provides complimentary 30-minute consultations with an attorney for LegalZoom customers.

By participating in the legal plan network, attorneys agree to provide these consultations for free, but they get a small cut of the legal plan subscription fees in exchange. Because these are not actual legal fees, there are no concerns with fee-splitting.

However, LegalZoom limits the number of attorneys who can participate and there are some eligibility requirements that you must meet.

Practice Areas

• Bankruptcy
• Business
• Civil Litigation
• Civil Rights
• Criminal Defense
• Divorce
• Employment Law
• Family Law
• General Practice
• Intellectual Property
• International Law
• Immigration
• Personal Injury
• Probate/Trust Administration
• Real Estate
• Securities
• Tax

LegalZoom Pricing for Lawyers

• Participation is free, but you have to discount your fees by 25% for clients you receive via the attorney network

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4LegalLeads Review for Lawyers

4LegalLeads is an independent attorney leads service operating nationwide in the U.S. They were founded in 2001 and provide leads for a large number of practice areas, including some narrow niches, like nursing home abuse, which other providers do not offer.

How 4LegalLeads Works

4LegalLeads uses a variety of advertising campaigns to attract leads. They also partner with other lead generation services and search engine marketing companies in order to expand their lead coverage.

Their leads are always exclusive and they are delivered in real time. They also offer live call transfers in certain instances in addition to delivering leads via the web.

This can be an advantage for some highly competitive practice areas, such as personal injury, where time is of the essence. It works on a rotating basis, where the first available attorney in the queue will receive the lead, so it’s important to have someone answering your phones at all times.

Practice Areas

• Auto Accidents
• Bankruptcy
• Business
• Child Birth Injury
• Civil Litigation (Non-Injury)
• Consumer Protection
• Criminal Defense
• Debt Collection
• DUI
• Employment Law
• Estate Planning
• Family Law
• Foreclosure Defense
• ID Theft
• Immigration
• Intellectual Property
• Landlord/tenant
• Medical Malpractice
• Nursing Home Abuse
• Personal Injury
• Real Estate
• Social Security Disability
• Tax
• Traffic Violations
• Workers’ Comp
• Wrongful Termination

4LegalLeads Pricing

• Auto Accidents – $125-600 per lead
• Bankruptcy – $50 per lead
• Business – $30 per lead
• Child Birth Injury – $70 per lead
• Civil Litigation (Non-Injury) – $20 per lead
• Consumer Protection – $20 per lead
• Criminal Defense – $60-85 per lead
• Debt Collection – $20 per lead
• DUI – $80-100 per lead
• Employment Law – $20-25 per lead
• Estate Planning – $40 per lead
• Family Law – $40 per lead
• Foreclosure Defense – $55 per lead
• ID Theft – $30 per lead
• Immigration – $20 per lead
• Intellectual Property – $30-40 per lead
• Landlord/tenant – $30 per lead
• Medical Malpractice – $40 per lead
• Nursing Home Abuse – $70 per lead
• Personal Injury – $75-150 per lead
• Real Estate – $30 per lead
• Social Security Disability – $40 per lead
• Tax – $60-120 per lead
• Traffic Violations – $20 per lead
• Workers’ Comp – $70-100 per lead
• Wrongful Termination – $8 per lead

Final thoughts on lead generation for lawyers

The right lead generation service can make a huge difference for your firm. Bringing in the right clients means you spend more time helping clients you can make the most difference for, creating great experiences, positive reviews, and even more business for your firms.

Ensure a positive experience for clients and smooth processes for your firm from intake to invoice: Make sure you’re using Clio Grow to manage all of your new leads. Book a demo to see it in action.

How much do personal injury leads cost?

Personal injury leads typically range in cost from $20 to $350 per lead. A personal injury lead’s price varies based on a few key factors, including the lead provider, geographical location, and level of exclusivity.

3 tips for how to generate personal injury leads

There are a number of ways to generate personal injury leads for your law firm, including:

Using lead generation services

Buying leads from lead generation services is one of the quickest and easiest ways to draw in more clients for your personal injury firm.

Boosting your law firm’s SEO

From updating your law firm’s website with the right keywords to publishing blog posts covering topics relevant to personal injury law, improving your law firm’s SEO is an effective way to generate new leads.

Posting on social media channels

Maintaining a professional and current social media presence for your personal injury law firm can help drive people to your firm’s website, which can mean new personal injury leads.

We published this blog post in August 2020. Last updated: July 9, 2024.

Categorized in: Marketing