# Legal Directories in 2026: Who Owns Them and What a Listing Really Costs _Avvo, Martindale-Hubbell, Lawyers.com, Nolo, FindLaw and Super Lawyers all run under one owner. None publishes a price. A federal court has held that an attorney rating is a statement of opinion. What that means before you sign._ **The short answer** **Most of the big legal directories share one owner.** Avvo, Martindale-Hubbell, Lawyers.com, Nolo and FindLaw all sit under Internet Brands, and Super Lawyers runs on its privacy policy too. Listing on several of them is not the spread of bets it looks like. **None of them publishes what a listing costs.** Every paid tier routes to a sales call. And a court has held that an attorney rating is a statement of opinion rather than a finding about your ability. A directory sales call usually opens with reach: how many people search the site, how many lawyers are listed, how prominent your competitors are. The questions that decide whether the spend is worth making rarely come up. Four of them matter. Who owns it, what it costs, what the badge actually means, and whether your bar rules let you pay for it at all. - **One owner** - Holds Avvo, Martindale-Hubbell, Lawyers.com, Nolo and FindLaw - **None** - Of the major directories publish what a paid listing costs - **Opinion** - What a federal court held an attorney rating legally is - **Free** - What claiming the profile you already have should cost ## Who owns the directory you are about to pay The legal directory business looks like a competitive market from the outside. It is mostly one company. Internet Brands holds most of the category. It trades as MH Sub I, LLC, and names itself the data controller on the privacy policy those sites share. Its own announcement from January 2018 calls it a portfolio company of KKR and Temasek. The same release lists Nolo, Martindale-Hubbell, Ngage and Total Attorneys as legal brands it held before it added Avvo. FindLaw joined them more recently. Thomson Reuters announced the closing of that sale in a release dated December 2, 2024. It moved the last big independent name under the same roof. | Directory | Who operates it | How you can check | | --- | --- | --- | | Avvo | Internet Brands | Terms and privacy links resolve to internetbrands.com | | Martindale-Hubbell | Internet Brands | Named in the 2018 acquisition announcement | | Lawyers.com | Internet Brands | Operates alongside Martindale-Hubbell | | Nolo | Internet Brands | Named in the 2018 acquisition announcement | | FindLaw | Internet Brands | Thomson Reuters release, December 2, 2024 | | Super Lawyers | Internet Brands | Its privacy policy redirects to internetbrands.com/privacy | | Justia | Justia | Separate company, separate terms | That concentration also shapes law firm ai search visibility, because those same directory pages are what an assistant reads when somebody asks it to recommend a lawyer. Check any of these yourself in about a minute. Open the directory in a browser, scroll down to the footer, and click the privacy policy or the terms of use link. Where that link lands tells you who you are actually dealing with, whatever the logo at the top of the page says. This matters for one practical reason. A firm that buys listings on Avvo, Martindale-Hubbell and Lawyers.com has not spread its risk across three vendors. It has three invoices from one company, three renewal dates set by one company, and one deal that can be re-cut as a whole. **Use it at the table rather than as a reason to walk away.** If several of your listings trace to the same owner, they belong in one conversation with one account manager. Ask what the combined spend buys that the separate invoices do not. ## What a listing costs, and why you cannot find out Not one major legal directory publishes the price of a paid listing. The pattern is consistent enough to be a policy rather than an oversight. Avvo's pricing page lists a free starter tier. For the paid tier it says to contact them for current pricing. Justia goes further and still stops short. It sets out what its free, Gold and Platinum tiers include, in detail, with no figure beside either paid level. The page sends you to a form or a phone number instead. Hidden pricing is not evidence of a bad product on its own. What it does tell you is that the price is set customer by customer. That makes it negotiable, and what you end up paying depends partly on how you ask for it. Three things to establish before any number is discussed. What the renewal term is and whether it renews automatically, since no directory page in general circulation mentions contract length at all. Whether the quoted figure is the first-year rate or the ongoing one. And what specifically happens to your placement if you stop paying, which is a different question from what happens to your profile. Read it the way you would read any other law firm marketing proposal. The terms decide what changing your mind will cost, and the terms are rarely in the document you see first. ## What a badge or a rating actually means This is the part most firms get wrong, and the legal position is clearer than the marketing suggests. In _Davis v. Avvo_, decided on December 20, 2018, Judge John Koeltl held that Avvo's ratings are statements of opinion protected by the First Amendment. He sits in the federal district court in Manhattan. The lawyer who sued had argued that those who bought ads got better ratings and better treatment. The court did not rule on whether the ratings were accurate. It held that a reader would take a rating as the company's own view of a lawyer. It also held that the "pro" badge was puffery. An earlier Washington case brought by two Seattle attorneys reached the same conclusion on the same ground. Read plainly, that means a rating is the directory's opinion, lawfully published, and nothing more. Avvo says as much itself, describing a rating as neither an endorsement nor a guarantee of quality nor a predictor of outcomes. Peer-selected lists work another way, and deserve their own reading. Super Lawyers describes a process of peer nomination, scoring against twelve indicators, and a peer review panel, with roughly the top 5% of lawyers in each state selected. It states that a lawyer cannot buy a place on the list, and points to a Special Master's opinion saying so. What it does sell is marketing to the lawyers who are selected, which is a separate transaction from the selection itself. **The distinction worth holding onto.** Being selected and advertising the selection are two different things. The first may cost nothing. The second is a purchase, and the badge on your website is the product you bought. ## What your bar rules allow Paying a directory is advertising, and the rules treat advertising differently from referrals. The line between them is where firms get into difficulty. Model Rule 7.2(b), as adopted across the states, says a lawyer "shall not compensate, give, or promise anything of value to a person for recommending the lawyer's services." The first exception immediately permits a lawyer to "pay the reasonable costs of advertisements or communications permitted by this Rule." The comments do the real work. Directory listings and group advertisements that list lawyers by practice area, "without more," are not treated as recommendations. Paying for online directory listings is named directly as a permitted advertising cost. And a lawyer may pay for generated leads only so long as the lead generator does not recommend the lawyer. Two words carry the weight: _without more_. A listing that places you under a practice area is advertising. A placement that presents you as selected, endorsed or ranked by the directory starts to look like a recommendation you paid for, and that is the arrangement the rule restricts. Rules vary by state and several have their own wording and their own opinions on particular services, so the version that governs you is your own jurisdiction's. One question settles most of it. Ask the salesperson whether the product presents a paying firm as recommended, and what the disclosure beside it says. ## The profile you never created Most lawyers already have directory profiles they never signed up for. Avvo builds them from public records supplied by state bars and other licensing bodies, and says it creates a profile where the state bar holds information. Three consequences follow, and none of them needs a purchase to address. - **Claiming is free, so claim**An unclaimed profile still ranks and still appears when someone searches your name. Claiming lets you correct the practice areas, the contact details and the bar admissions, which is worth doing whether or not you ever pay for anything. - **Removal is usually not on offer**Directories built on public bar data usually refuse to delete a profile. Plan on managing the listing rather than eliminating it, and treat "pay or the profile stays wrong" as a sales position rather than a technical limit. - **Competitor ads may sit on your page**Several directories sell ad slots on other lawyers' profiles. Clearing those ads off your own page is often a paid feature. Look at your profile as a stranger would before deciding what that is worth. ## What the sales call sounds like The pitch is built around size. How many people visit the site each month, how many lawyers are listed on it, and which of your rivals already pay and for what. None of those numbers is false, and none of them is about your firm either. Site traffic is not your traffic, and a rival paying for something is not evidence that the thing works. Four questions turn the call into something useful. Ask them in writing if you can, so the answers are on record. - **How many firms share this placement?**A top slot that rotates among six firms is a sixth of a top slot, sold at the price of a whole one. Ask how many firms share it, and how often it turns over. - **What is the term, and when does it renew?**No directory page in general circulation states a contract length anywhere on it. Get the term, the renewal date and the notice deadline in the same reply as the price, so all four arrive together. - **What does the page look like after the plan ends?**The question is not whether the profile survives, but what goes back onto it when you stop. Rival ads often return the day the plan lapses. - **Can the leads go to a tracking number?**Agreeing to that costs the vendor nothing and gives you a count you can trust. A refusal is worth noting, because it is the one answer with no good reason behind it. ## What you are actually renting A directory listing is rent rather than a purchase. You pay each month for a position on somebody else's page, and the position ends on the day the payments do. That is not a reason to skip it. Rent buys speed, and a new firm with no search footing can be in front of people next week rather than next year. Paid reach starts the day you buy it. It is a reason to keep the two budgets straight. Work on your own site compounds. A practice area page you own keeps bringing in matters after the invoice stops, and it still carries the content, the reviews and the calls when you change vendors. The sane split for most firms is a floor and a lever. The floor is the site, the content and the claimed profiles, all of which you keep. The lever is paid reach you can raise or drop in a quarter, directories included. Trouble starts when the lever becomes the floor, which is what a multi-year directory commitment quietly does. When you do claim one, four fields are worth the ten minutes. The practice areas, because these drive which searches surface you. The office address, because it feeds the map results. The bar admissions, because an out-of-date one makes everything else look careless. And the phone number, which is the only field on the page that can actually ring. ## Deciding whether to pay Directories can work. They are a real channel with real search traffic. In some practice areas, in some cities, they bring in steady work. The problem is that almost nobody measures whether their own listing does. Set the measurement up before the first invoice, not after the renewal. - **Use a dedicated phone number**One tracking number per directory, used nowhere else. This one step turns a hunch into a count, and it costs a few dollars a month. - **Count signed matters, not calls**Directory traffic skews toward price shopping in some practice areas. Thirty calls that sign nobody is a worse result than four that sign two, and only the second number pays an invoice. - **Give it two renewal cycles, then decide**A quarter is too short to judge and three years is too long to drift. Put the review date in the calendar beside the cancellation deadline. - **Compare against the alternative use of the money**A directory listing competes with your own site, which you keep. Weigh the annual listing fee against what a law firm website cost would buy outright, because one is rent and the other is an asset. That last comparison is the one most worth making. Directory spend is recurring and the visibility stops when the payments do. Work you own keeps earning after the invoice stops. **Key takeaways** - Avvo, Martindale-Hubbell, Lawyers.com, Nolo, FindLaw and Super Lawyers all operate under Internet Brands, so listings on several are one commercial relationship rather than a spread of bets. - No major directory publishes its paid pricing, which means the number is negotiable and depends on how you ask. - A federal court held in _Davis v. Avvo_ that attorney ratings are statements of opinion, and that the "pro" badge was puffery. - Model Rule 7.2(b) permits paying for a directory listing as advertising; the exposure begins where the listing presents you as recommended rather than simply listed. - Claim the profiles you already have, which is free, and put a tracking number on anything you pay for before the first invoice. ## Common Questions ### Is it ethical to pay for a legal directory listing? Paying for advertising is permitted. Model Rule 7.2(b) bars compensating someone for recommending you, and then expressly allows paying the reasonable costs of advertising, with online directory listings named as an example. The comments treat listings by practice area, "without more," as advertising rather than recommendation. Where a product presents your firm as endorsed or selected, check your own state's rule and any opinion it has issued on that service. ### Does paying a directory improve the rating? Directories say no, and the lawyer who argued otherwise lost. In _Davis v. Avvo_ the claim was that paying advertisers got better ratings and better treatment. The court held the ratings were protected opinion and never reached the question of accuracy. In practice the rating and the ads are sold as two things, and the badge on your site is the part you bought. ### Can a firm be removed from a directory? Usually not. Profiles are built from state bar licensing records that are already public, and directories generally decline to delete them. The workable goal is an accurate claimed profile rather than no profile. Claiming costs nothing and lets you fix the details that are wrong. ### Which legal directory is best? No one can answer that for your firm from the outside, because it turns on your practice area, your city and how your intake handles the calls. The answerable version is narrower: which one sends you matters you sign. A tracking number on each listing answers it within two renewal cycles, and nothing else does. ### How much should a directory listing cost? There is no published benchmark, because none of the major directories publishes its paid pricing. What that absence tells you is that the figure is set per customer and is therefore negotiable. Ask for the renewal rate and the contract length in the same email as the price, since those three together are the actual cost. ## Where these figures come from Ownership was checked against each company's own announcements rather than against other people's reporting. Those are two documents. Internet Brands' announcement of January 2018 names the legal brands it held and its KKR and Temasek backing. Thomson Reuters' release of December 2, 2024 closes the FindLaw sale. Where a site's privacy policy or terms resolve to Internet Brands, that is stated as what it is. It is the link's destination, and anyone can check it in a browser. Pricing reflects what each directory published on its own pages. The court holding is _Davis v. Avvo_, decided in the Southern District of New York on December 20, 2018. The ethics language is Model Rule 7.2 as adopted at state level, linked below, and rules differ by jurisdiction. Nothing here is legal advice, and a question about your own advertising is a question for your own bar rules. AttorneyPlot builds websites for law firms, which is a competing use of the same budget, so weigh this page accordingly. - [Internet Brands — agreement to acquire Avvo, January 11, 2018](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/internet-brands-to-acquire-avvo-300581042.html) - [Thomson Reuters — closing of the FindLaw sale to Internet Brands](https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en/press-releases/2024/december/thomson-reuters-sells-findlaw-business-to-internet-brands) - [Internet Brands — privacy policy naming MH Sub I, LLC as data controller](https://www.internetbrands.com/privacy) - [ABA Journal — ruling in _Davis v. Avvo_](https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/avvos-lawyer-ratings-are-protected-by-the-first-amendment-judge-rules-in-false-advertising-suit) - [Rule 7.2 — communications concerning a lawyer's services](https://www.ncbar.gov/for-lawyers/ethics/rules-of-professional-conduct/rule-72-rule-72-communications-concerning-a-lawyers-services-specific-rules/) - [American Bar Association — Model Rules of Professional Conduct](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/model_rules_of_professional_conduct_table_of_contents/) - [Justia — lawyer directory tiers](https://www.justia.com/marketing/lawyer-directory/) - [Avvo — advertising tiers for lawyers](https://www.avvo.com/for-lawyers/pricing) - [Super Lawyers — selection process](https://www.superlawyers.com/about/selection_process.html) - [Martindale-Hubbell](https://www.martindale.com/) - [American Bar Association — 2023 Websites & Marketing TechReport](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_practice/resources/tech-report/2023/2023-websites-and-marketing-techreport/)