[See also this follow-up: Legal Directory Rankings: An Alternate View.]

Which online lawyer directories get the most traffic? To find out, I checked Alexa.com, which tracks statistics for all major websites. Based on those statistics, it assigns each site a global rank as well as country-specific ranks. Not surprisingly, the two top-ranked sites in the world are Google and Facebook.

Alexa calculates a site’s rank using a combination of its average daily visitors and pageviews over the past three months. Thus, the site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews is ranked #1, and so on. Of course, a site’s ranking can change frequently, based on ebbs and flows in traffic.

I selected several sites to compare. Let me say up front that comparing these sites based on raw rankings is unfair. Some of these sites are consumer-facing sites while others are industry-facing sites. Naturally, the consumer sites will get more traffic. For some of these sites, the lawyer directory is their primary focus. For others, the directory is secondary to other featured content. For example, Nolo.com has a lawyer directory, but is better known for its legal guides and do-it-yourself legal resources.

With that proviso, it is interesting, nonetheless, to see how these sites line up in the rankings. As you can see, both globally and in the U.S., the top four are FindLaw.com, Avvo.com, Justia.com and Lawyers.com.

Alexa Global Rank

  1. FindLaw.com, 5,765
  2. Avvo.com, 7.748
  3. Justia.com, 8,925
  4. Lawyers.com, 8,927
  5. Nolo.com, 16,480
  6. Martindale.com, 23,337
  7. LegalMatch.com, 38,430
  8. SuperLawyers.com, 58,056
  9. LawyerCentral.com, 91,219
  10. Legal500.com, 113,920
  11. ChambersAndPartners.com, 189,627
  12. BestLawyers.com, 376,373

Alexa U.S. Rank

  1. Findlaw.com, 1,401
  2. Avvo.com, 1,698
  3. Justia.com, 2,024
  4. Lawyers.com, 2,207
  5. Nolo.com, 3,566
  6. Martindale.com, 5,975
  7. LegalMatch.com, 9,203
  8. SuperLawyers.com, 12,899
  9. LawyerCentral.com, 23,105
  10. BestLawyers.com, 110,825
  11. ChambersAndPartners.com, 159,942
  12. Legal500.com, 170,909
Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.