We have put together a review of Martindale.com. Today we’ll be continuing on with our ongoing series, Clearway Investigates – our probe into the world of online legal resource and directory websites.

The online space is crowded and with so many options, it can be a difficult task to decide where to expend your energy and perhaps more importantly, where to invest your law firm’s marketing dollars.

Continuing our examination of one of the largest online legal resource networks, we’re offering our complete review of Martindale.com, part of the Martindale-Avvo network. You may recognize at least one of those names from previous editions of Clearway Investigates. If not, please take some time to read through our reviews of two other well-known sites from the same network: Nolo.com and Avvo.com.

As you’ll see, Martindale.com has some serious history behind it, but that fact alone doesn’t necessarily make it a worthy choice for your investment. We’ll review the site from top to bottom, providing analysis of not only its legal directory but also the marketing services the website offers to legal professionals.

Well, let’s get to it!

What is Martindale.com?

Martindale.com is the online arm of the storied Martindale-Hubbell company. Incredibly this company’s origins trace back more than 150 years to 1868.

We’ll get more into the history in a bit but suffice it to say, it’s old!

Martindale.com is above all else a legal directory and handily the oldest legal directory out there. Both the directory itself and the peer ranking system it uses stretches nearly back as far as the company’s founding. The Martindale.com legal directory offers both peer reviews and client reviews. Not all directory entries have them, but the opportunity is there.

In addition to its legal directory, Martindale.com also features a whole suite of online marketing tools for legal professionals and law firms. This includes legal websites as well as SEO and PPC services to support your firm’s growing online presence.

The Martindale-Hubbell Story

As we mentioned, Martindale Hubbell is old. Not of this century or even the last one old.

The very first Martindale-Hubbell Directory was published way back in 1868. Just to be crystal clear, this wasn’t an online directory (duh!) but rather a list of reputable lawyers organized by city, in its earliest incarnation.

From the beginning, it was designed to be the trusted aid in finding reputable legal counsel. Going back nearly that long, the well-known Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Ratings began in 1891, an attempt to create a dependable metric to rate lawyers and law firms across the country.

Jumping too much more modern times in 2014, Martindale.com joined with a bevy of other legal websites to create what could be the largest network of legal directories and legal resource websites on the web. In addition to Martindale.com, this network also comprises other well-known websites like Nolo.com and Avvo.com among many others.

How Does Martindale.com Rank Lawyers?

Martindale.com is unique among the majority of legal directories out there in that it provides both a peer review ranking as well as a client review ranking. This unique system is meant to avoid bias by providing analysis from more than a single perspective.

First, the Peer Review system started out with a simple A, B or C ranking that corresponded with the lawyer or firm’s level of legal ability and ethical standards. More recently, a “V” has been added to the simple ABC ranking to denote very high ethical standards.

Lawyers are eligible for an A ranking after 10 years in business and a B ranking after 5 years in business. To gauge these rankings, peers are polled through a special peer-review survey that is sent out regularly.

Review of Martindale.com

There is also the Customer Review component. Modern consumers simply have the expectation of seeing client reviews represented on any professional directory worth their salt, and Martindale-Hubbell is no different. While its Peer Review system is very well established, its client review feature is decidedly a much more modern addition.

Incorporated into the website in 2017, a new yearly client ranking system became an important part of each attorney’s profile. Legal professionals can win one of four “Client Champion” awards based on how well they were reviewed by current and past clients:

Platinum – at least 10 reviews with an average score of 4.5 or higher

Gold – at least 6 reviews with an average score of 4.2 or higher

Silver – at least 3 reviews with an average score of 4.0 or higher

Client Reviewed – at least one review

Both designations are featured prominently on each lawyer’s profile page. The site’s directory search features also make use of both rankings, allowing website visitors to filter their search using the metric they find most valuable: peer review or client review.

Does a lawyer’s ranking really matter?

Yes, but probably not as much as it used to.

Back in the day when the first American Law Directory was first published, it was truly one of a kind. Today as I’m sure you’re well aware, review websites are everywhere and available for just about every industry you can think of. This is great for consumers looking to do online research but not so good for professional companies looking to build their online business and client base.

From the consumer’s perspective, there is a bit of an over-saturation of awards and designations, so it can be hard to know what really matters. Martindale has history on its side and has a good name within the legal profession, but for the public as a whole?

Not so much.

This is likely what led to the company’s decision to add client reviews to its profile pages. For consumers, no signal is stronger than a recommendation or referral from a friend and an online review from actual clients is the modern, online equivalent.

How can you get ranked?

There are a few simple steps you can take to first, get ranked and, second, improve your ranking by Martindale-Heppell.

Contact their customer service team and provide them with the following:

Name

Firm’s Name

Email Address

Subscription Status

Compile and submit peer references:

The recommendation is 20-25 references from attorneys and judges you’ve worked with

Get in contact with your references:

Give them a heads up and they’ll be more likely to give you a favourable review.

Can you pay for a preferred directory position?

Paying for a premium directory will allow you or your firm access to more robust directory listings that appear across a large portion of the extensive Martindale-Avvo network. The biggest benefit of paying for a premium position is being automatically featured on those other high-traffic sites. The primary three noted are of course Martindale.com itself, in addition to Lawyers.com and Nolo.com.

Combined, those three websites alone attract over 2.5 million organic users each month – and that’s just traffic from search engines like Google. You also have to think about direct traffic, referrals and paid advertising. It all equals up to a lot of eyeballs.

Putting it simply, if you’re a new law firm or legal practice just starting out and looking to gain an online presence, this is a solid place to start. Referral traffic from these websites is one thing, but the SEO benefits of the profile links to your website are also incredibly valuable.

It’s important to keep the specifics of your market in mind when setting your expectations. A law firm operating in a large, congested market like Southern California is likely going to need to make a bigger investment in order to be seen, compared to a smaller market in Nebraska. That’s just common sense.

Does Martindale.com offer marketing services to Lawyers?

Yes, they do!

Aside from its legal directory, the website’s legal marketing services are the second most visible component of the website. Martindale.com offers an impressive array of online marketing services, starting with its websites for legal professionals.

The Martindale.com website packages come in a few different varieties including Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum levels. Essentially the different website packages offer more services as you move up, allowing clients to take advantage of content writing, SEO, PPC advertising and social media services.

Starting off at bronze, you’ll get a website set up and a directory listing on the Martindale-Avvo network, while the top-level platinum package provides a dedicated SEO specialist, preferred positioning on the network’s directory and more.

Are the lawyer websites any good?

Martindale.com boldly claims that they have created websites for over 40,000 legal professionals. They are certainly an affordable option for lawyers just starting out and start-up law firms, but are they up to snuff in terms of their design, navigability and, most importantly, their visibility in search engines (i.e. SEO)?

That’s the important question.

Martindale.com makes claims that their websites are modern looking and come in a large variety of designs for you to choose from, but there are some inevitable limitations there. The examples we looked at were nice but may not have the variety some law firms are looking for. There is definitely a cookie-cutter aspect to them.

Again, this practice contributes to making this an affordable website service, affordable to new firms and the more budget conscious out there.

But, what about SEO? Many of the website reviews we read through wrote negatively about the SEO services offered by Martindale and many of the templates still use outdated tactics or not following modern best practices for good SEO.

Also, the Martindale.com website makes several dubious claims about its websites. Features like responsiveness are almost a given when it comes to website providers, or it should be anyway. This is not a novel feature anymore but a necessity.

So, the best advice is to stick with the Bronze or Silver packages we mentioned above. The higher-level bundles offer more content and SEO services for their greater price tags, but this is definitely a buyer-beware situation. It’s hard to know what you’ll be getting into.

Is the Lead Generation / PPC Service Worth it?

Similar to above, a lot of the quality of leads you’ll get from a service like this comes down to which area of law you practice and how congested your market is.

If your practice area is pretty niche and you practice in a congested market, chances are you won’t get a good volume of leads that fit into the narrow silo that you’ve built for yourself. That being said, we weren’t able to find a whole lot of positive sentiment when it comes to the quality of the leads coming out of Martindale.com.

Reddit.com is littered with threads that bemoan the quality of leads received. And although Martindale does offer a certain guarantee as to the quality of the leads they provide, getting a refund for bad or irrelevant leads can be challenging.

Attorney Marketing

Martindale.com is one of a slew of legal directory and marketing services websites that have merged in recent years. It’s gotten to the point where it’s hard to distinguish one from another – you certainly wouldn’t be alone in this regard.

Martindale might be the worst offender though. Even when reviewing their website and online reviews, they are referred to by many, many names not limited to Martindale, Martindale-Hubbell, the Martindale Nolo Marketing Networking and Martindale-Avvo. The endless name changes are an effect of many acquisitions and mergers in recent years, and an additional result is a number of very similar and competing services across those websites.

To put it bluntly, Martindale.com shines in certain aspects while others feature a less brilliant lustre.

Review of Martindale.com

The star of the website’s offerings is its directory without a doubt. As one of the oldest and most established directories out there, its features are pretty robust and the prestige of a positive peer review is still very real. In a modern world where online reviews are a dime a dozen, the Martindale-Hubbell ranking still has some heft.

Its website/marketing service offerings are a little more scattered. The websites themselves aren’t anything to write home about and their claims of quality SEO and PPC / lead generation services are dubious at best.

Our recommendation would be to stick with the directory listings that offer fantastic visibility across the web along with one of the basic website packages if you need a website. While basic, the website service does offer a decent value that will be welcome for newer lawyers and small firms looking to establish themselves online.

We hope you enjoyed this review of Martindale.com. Keep doing your research and make sure you pick what is best for your law firm.

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Martindale.com: A Definitive Review