If a potential client searches “personal injury lawyer near me” or “divorce attorney” in your city, the first thing Google shows is not the top law firm’s website. It shows the local pack: a small map and three business listings, each with a star rating, a review count, a phone number, and a directions button. Those three listings come from Google Business Profiles. If your firm doesn’t have one set up properly, you are invisible for the exact searches that turn into signed clients.
The good news: setting up a Google Business Profile is free, and you can do the whole thing yourself in an afternoon. The catch is that Google has made verification stricter, the setup screens bury a few decisions that decide whether you ever rank, and law firms have quirks — regulated titles, a physical office clients rarely visit, sensitive practice areas — that generic setup advice ignores. This guide walks through every step in order, with the specific choices that matter for a law firm in the United States or Canada.
Work through it top to bottom the first time. The order matters: the foundation fields (name, category, address, verification) have to be right before the content fields on top of them do anything. Once you finish, move on to our optimization checklist to turn a live profile into a ranking one.
Before you start: what you need on hand
Setting up goes faster if you gather these first. None of it is complicated, but hunting for it mid-setup is where people stall and leave a half-finished profile that never gets verified.
- A Google account you control long-term. Use a firm account (for example, info@yourfirm.com), not a paralegal’s personal Gmail that walks out the door when they leave. Whoever owns this account owns the profile.
- Your firm’s exact legal or trading name as it appears on your signage, letterhead, and law-society or state-bar registration. Consistency here matters more than you’d think.
- Your real office address — the one on your bar registration — and a decision about whether clients actually visit it.
- A local phone number that rings at the office, and your website URL.
- Your hours, including how you handle after-hours and holidays.
- A short list of photos: your logo, the building exterior with signage, the reception or a meeting room, and a headshot or two.
- Something that proves the office is real for verification — more on that below, because Google now leans heavily on video.
One decision to make before you touch anything: who is the long-term owner of this profile? Reviews, rankings, and years of history all attach to it. Losing access — because it was built on a former employee’s account or a marketing vendor’s login — is one of the most common and painful problems firms hit. Set it up under an account the firm will always control, then add staff or agencies as managers later.
Step 1: Create or claim your profile
Go to google.com/business (Google Business Profile Manager) and sign in with the firm account. Before you create anything, search for your firm’s name and address. Google may have already generated an unclaimed listing for you — law firms often exist in Google’s data from old directories, court records, or a client who added you. If a listing already exists, claim that one instead of creating a duplicate. Duplicates split your reviews and rankings and are a headache to merge later.
If nothing exists, choose to add your business, and type your firm’s name. If Google suggests a match as you type, and it’s genuinely your firm, select it to claim it. If not, continue creating a new profile. From here Google walks you through the fields in roughly the order below — but the choices you make on the next few screens are the ones that decide whether you rank, so slow down.
Step 2: Enter your business name — exactly, and nothing more
Type your firm’s name the way it appears in the real world: on your sign, your door, your letterhead. If you are “Smith & Associates,” that’s the name. Not “Smith & Associates Personal Injury Lawyers Toronto Best Car Accident Attorney.”
Stuffing keywords or a city into your business name is against Google’s guidelines, and it is the single most reported profile among competitors. It works — briefly — and then a competitor reports it, Google suspends or edits your profile, and you spend weeks getting it back. Worse, it teaches Google your name is untrustworthy. Use your real name. You’ll rank for the practice-area and city terms through your category, your services, and your website — the legitimate levers — not by gaming the name field.
The one exception: if your registered, real-world name genuinely includes a descriptor — “Barrie Family Law” is your actual trading name on your sign and law-society registration — then that is your name and it’s fine. The test is simple: does it match what a client would see on your building?
Step 3: Choose your primary category — the highest-leverage field on the whole profile
Your primary category tells Google what you are, and it is the biggest single factor in which searches you’re eligible to appear for. Get this one right and everything else has something to build on. Get it wrong and no amount of reviews or posts will rescue you.
Pick the most specific category that matches your dominant practice area, not the generic one. Google offers granular legal categories — use them:
- Personal injury → Personal injury attorney, not “Lawyer”
- Family law → Family law attorney or Divorce lawyer
- Criminal defense → Criminal justice attorney
- Estate planning → Estate planning attorney
- Immigration → Immigration attorney
- Employment → Employment attorney
“Lawyer” or “Legal services” as a primary category is a wasted opportunity — it lumps you in with every practice area and matches you weakly to everything. Choose the specific one that reflects where most of your revenue comes from.
Secondary categories
You can add secondary categories for your other real practice areas — a family lawyer who also does wills might add “Estate planning attorney.” Add the ones you genuinely practice, but don’t pad the list with areas you don’t actually work in; it dilutes your relevance and can invite scrutiny. Your primary category should always reflect your strongest, most profitable area, because that is the one Google weights most heavily. For the full logic, our guide on choosing GBP categories goes deeper.
Step 4: Address and service area — do clients come to you, or do you go to them?
This screen trips up more law firms than any other, because Google asks whether you have a location customers can visit, and lawyers are a genuine edge case. You have an office, but many clients never set foot in it — they call, sign remotely, and meet by video.
Here’s the rule that keeps you compliant and ranking:
- If clients visit your office — even sometimes — enter your real street address and keep it public. A verified physical address is a strong ranking signal, and most firms should do this.
- If you truly never meet clients at the office (a home-based or virtual practice), you can set up as a service-area business and hide the street address, showing only the regions you serve. But you still must enter and verify a real address during setup — Google just won’t display it.
Do not invent a virtual-office or mailbox address to appear in a city where you don’t have a real, staffed presence. Google treats fake locations as a serious violation and it’s a fast route to suspension. If you have one real office, you rank around that office. Whichever path you choose, use the exact same address format everywhere online — suite number, abbreviations, punctuation — because inconsistent addresses across the web (your website, your law-society profile, directories) quietly suppress local rankings.
Step 5: Phone number and website
Use a local phone number that actually rings at your office, not a tracking number that forwards through three services, and ideally not a toll-free line as your primary. A local number reinforces to Google that you’re a real local business, and it’s what most people expect from a nearby firm. If you use call tracking, keep your true main line as the primary number on the profile and handle tracking elsewhere so your number stays consistent with the rest of the web.
For the website, link to the most relevant page, which for most firms is the homepage. If you have a strong, well-optimized page for your primary practice area, you can point there instead — the destination page’s content reinforces what Google thinks you do. Make sure whatever you link loads fast on a phone and makes it obvious how to call or book, because a chunk of the people who tap through are ready to act.
Step 6: Verify your profile — the step that stops most firms cold
Nothing you enter goes live in search until Google verifies you actually run the business at that location. Verification has changed: the old “mail me a postcard with a code” method still appears sometimes, but Google increasingly requires video verification, and for professional-services businesses like law firms it’s now common.
How video verification works
Google asks you to record a single, continuous, unedited video — usually from your phone, through the profile dashboard — that proves three things: that the location is real, that you have access to it, and that it’s genuinely your business. A strong verification video, in one take, shows:
- The outside of the building and your signage — the street, the entrance, your firm’s name on the door or a directory board.
- You walking inside from that exterior, so it’s clearly the same place — reception, your nameplate, the office.
- Proof it’s your business — branded material, letterhead, a business licence or your law-society/bar certificate on the wall, or you signing into a system that shows the firm name.
Do it in daylight, hold the phone steady, don’t stop recording between the exterior and interior, and don’t edit it. Review typically takes a few days, sometimes up to a week. If it’s rejected, you usually get another attempt — the most common reasons are a video that doesn’t connect the outside to the inside, missing signage, or nothing tying the space to your firm’s name.
For a service-area or home-based practice, verification is harder because there’s no storefront — be ready to show a home office plus documents proving the business operates from that address. If you get suspended or stuck during verification, don’t create a second profile to get around it; that compounds the problem. Fix the original.
Step 7: Set your hours — and keep them honest
Enter your real business hours. This matters more than it looks: Google shows “Open now” or “Closed,” and a searcher deciding who to call at 5:30 p.m. often picks the firm that’s open. Wrong hours — showing open when you’re not, or closed when you are — both cost you, and repeated corrections from users can erode trust in your profile.
- Set your standard weekly hours accurately.
- Use special hours for statutory holidays and closures so you don’t show “open” on a day you’re shut — a small thing that saves a frustrated caller and a bad first impression.
- If you offer real after-hours intake — an answering service or 24/7 line — reflect that honestly, because for injury and criminal matters the firm that answers first usually gets the case.
Step 8: Add your services
Services are a structured list of what you do, and they’re one of the most underused fields on a law-firm profile. Adding them gives Google more specific matches for what people search and gives clients a clear menu of how you can help.
List your real practice areas and matter types as individual services — for a personal injury firm: car accidents, slip and fall, medical malpractice, wrongful death, and so on. Where Google lets you add a short description to a service, use it: a couple of plain sentences describing that service and who it’s for. Don’t keyword-stuff; write it for a worried human, and it will read well to Google too. Our guide on GBP attributes and services covers exactly how to structure these.
Step 9: Write your business description
You get up to 750 characters for a description. It doesn’t directly move rankings much, but it’s the first paragraph a nervous prospect reads about you, and it’s prime real estate for establishing trust. Use the first sentence to say plainly who you help and how — the practice areas, the jurisdiction, and one reason to choose you (years of experience, results, a clear approach). Then a line on what makes working with you feel different.
A few rules Google enforces: no phone numbers, no URLs, and no promotional junk like “best” or “#1” in the description — those can get it rejected. Write it like you’d explain your firm to a friend of a friend who just got hurt or served with papers: calm, specific, and human. Lead with the client’s problem, not your firm’s history.
Step 10: Add photos — more than you think you need
Profiles with photos get meaningfully more calls and direction requests than those without, and Google reads photos as a sign the business is real and active. At setup, add at least:
- Your logo and a cover photo (a clean shot of the office or your branding).
- The building exterior with signage — it also helps clients actually find you, and it echoes your verification.
- Interior shots — reception, a meeting room, a tidy, human space. Law is intimidating; a warm, real office lowers the barrier to walking in.
- Team headshots — people hire lawyers, not logos. Faces build trust fast.
Use real photos of your actual office and people, not stock images — clients can tell, and so, increasingly, can Google. Aim for ten or more to start, and plan to add a few every month; freshness is a small ongoing signal. Our deep dive on GBP photos for law firms covers what to shoot and how.
Step 11: Get your first reviews — carefully and compliantly
Reviews are the strongest ongoing ranking factor for the local pack and the single biggest driver of whether a searcher chooses you. A brand-new profile with zero reviews looks risky next to competitors with dozens. So the day you’re verified, start — the right way.
Grab your review link from the dashboard (there’s a “Ask for reviews” option that gives you a short URL) and send it to a handful of recent, genuinely satisfied clients with a short, personal note. A steady trickle of honest reviews beats a sudden flood, which can look manufactured. Two compliance points lawyers cannot ignore:
- Never pay for or incentivize reviews — it violates Google’s policies and, for lawyers, your professional-conduct rules.
- Mind confidentiality and your bar/law-society advertising rules — ask clients to describe their experience of working with you, not the confidential details of their matter, and never confirm or reveal case specifics in your replies.
Then reply to every review, good or bad, professionally and without disclosing anything. Our review response strategy shows how to answer without stepping on confidentiality, and our guide to Google reviews for law firms covers building volume ethically.
Step 12: Publish a first post and seed your Q&A
Two quick wins that make a new profile look alive on day one. First, publish a Google Post — a short update, a helpful tip, or a “we’re open and taking new clients” note with a call-to-action. Posts show in your profile and signal activity. Second, seed your Questions & Answers: anyone can post a question on your profile, so get ahead of it by adding two or three real questions clients actually ask (“Do you offer free consultations?”, “What areas do you serve?”) and answering them yourself. It fills the space with accurate information instead of leaving it blank for a competitor or a confused stranger to fill.
Our guides on GBP posts and the Q&A section cover what to publish and how often.
The setup mistakes that quietly cost law firms
Most damage isn’t dramatic — it’s a small wrong choice at setup that caps your ceiling for years. The ones we see most:
- Keyword-stuffing the business name. The fastest way to get reported and suspended.
- Choosing “Lawyer” as the primary category instead of the specific one that matches your money practice area.
- Building the profile on a personal or vendor account the firm doesn’t control — then losing it.
- Inconsistent name, address, and phone across your website, law-society profile, and directories — a silent rankings drag.
- A fake or virtual address to fake a presence in another city — a suspension waiting to happen.
- Stopping at “verified.” A verified but empty profile doesn’t rank. Setup is the start line, not the finish.
What to do after setup
Once your profile is live and verified, the work shifts from setup to maintenance and optimization — and that’s where the rankings actually come from. In your first ninety days, focus on a steady stream of honest reviews, weekly posts, fresh photos, and keeping every field complete and current. Track what’s working in your profile’s performance insights so you know whether people are calling, requesting directions, and visiting your site.
From here, three resources take you the rest of the way: our optimization checklist for the ongoing ranking work, the first-90-days guide if your firm is brand new, and the complete GBP guide for the full picture. And because a growing share of clients now find lawyers through AI assistants, it’s worth understanding how your profile feeds AI search, and how our Google Business Profile service handles all of this for firms that would rather have it done for them. If you want a fast read on where your profile stands right now, run the free GBP score checker.
Want your profile set up and ranking — done for you?
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