Schema markup for law firms is structured data, usually JSON-LD in the page code, that tells search engines exactly what your firm is: its name, address, phone, practice areas, attorneys and pages. The core types are LegalService (or LocalBusiness) for the firm, Person for each attorney, and BreadcrumbList and Article for site structure and content. It helps machines understand you; it is not a ranking shortcut.
Plenty of SEO vendors still sell schema as a magic trick. Some of what they install is outdated (FAQ stars) or against Google's policies (self-applied review stars). Here's what to mark up, what to skip and how to check it.
What Schema Markup Does for a Law Firm
Schema markup gives Google, Bing and AI systems a clean, unambiguous version of facts that are otherwise buried in your page design.
A human reading your contact page knows "Suite 410" is part of the address and "Mon–Fri 8–6" are office hours. A crawler has to guess. Structured data removes the guessing. That can support how your firm appears in knowledge panels and makes your entity information consistent across the web, which matters more now that AI answer engines summarize firms rather than just listing links.
What it won't do: move you from page three to page one, or replace a well-run Google Business Profile, which remains the primary source for local results. Google has said structured data helps it understand content and can make pages eligible for certain rich results, not that it boosts rankings directly. Treat it as hygiene. Necessary, cheap if done once properly, and invisible to clients.
For how this fits into the broader SEO picture, see SEO for lawyers; for the AI side, our AI search optimization guide.
Which Schema Types Should a Law Firm Use?
Most law firm sites need four or five schema types, each on specific pages.
| Schema type | Where it goes | What to include | Rich result? |
|---|---|---|---|
| LegalService (a LocalBusiness subtype) | Home page or contact page, once per office | Name, address, phone, URL, hours, geo coordinates, logo, areaServed, sameAs links to your profiles | Supports local and knowledge panel understanding |
| Person | Each attorney bio page | Name, jobTitle, worksFor, alumniOf, memberOf (bar associations), sameAs | No dedicated rich result |
| Organization | Home page (can be combined with LegalService) | Legal name, logo, contact points, social profiles | Logo and entity understanding |
| BreadcrumbList | Every page with a breadcrumb trail | Each level of the path | Eligible |
| Article / BlogPosting | Blog posts and guides | Headline, author (linked to the Person), dates published and modified | Supports article understanding |
| FAQPage | Pages with a visible FAQ | Questions and answers exactly as shown on the page | Not for law firms (see below) |
Multi-office firms should mark up each office separately, ideally on its own location page, with an address that matches that office's Google Business Profile exactly. Consistency between schema, your site and your local SEO citations is the whole point.
LegalService vs. Attorney vs. LocalBusiness
For most firms, LegalService is the right primary type, because schema.org describes the older Attorney type as deprecated in favor of LegalService.
The hierarchy runs Thing → Organization and Place → LocalBusiness → LegalService. Because LegalService inherits from LocalBusiness, it supports all the local properties Google reads: address, telephone, openingHoursSpecification, geo, priceRange and so on. Using plain LocalBusiness works but says less. Using Attorney still validates, but there's no reason to choose a deprecated type for a new build.
Firm vs. attorney
Keep the firm and the people separate. The firm is a LegalService. Each lawyer is a Person who worksFor the firm. Don't mark up a solo attorney's name as the business name unless that's genuinely the firm's legal name. Linking the two with IDs lets search engines connect the attorney's credentials to the firm, which is useful for the experience and trust signals Google talks about.
FAQ and Review Markup: What Changed
FAQ and review markup are where law firms most often get outdated or bad advice.
Since August 2023, Google shows FAQ rich results only for well-known, authoritative government and health websites. A law firm adding FAQPage markup will not get the expandable questions under its search listing anymore. The markup is still valid schema and can still help machines parse the page, so leaving accurate FAQ markup on pages with visible FAQs is fine. Paying someone to add it for "rich snippets" is not.
Google does not show review stars for a business's reviews of itself. If your own site marks up an AggregateRating or Review for your own firm (sometimes called self-serving reviews), it won't earn star snippets, and marking up reviews that aren't visible on the page, or that you wrote or selected misleadingly, can violate Google's structured data policies. There's also a bar angle: any rating you display or encode is still a communication about your services under ABA Model Rule 7.1, and state rules on testimonials vary. Let reviews live on Google and other platforms; our review management guide covers that.
How to Add Schema Markup for Law Firms
Adding schema markup for law firms is a one-time setup with small ongoing upkeep.
Inventory your facts
Write down the firm's exact name, each office's address and phone, hours, attorneys and the profiles you want linked through sameAs (Google Business Profile URL, LinkedIn, Avvo, state bar profile). These must match your visible pages and citations.
Generate JSON-LD
Use JSON-LD, which Google recommends. Many CMS platforms and SEO plugins generate basic Organization and LocalBusiness markup; check what they output and correct the type to LegalService if needed. Custom-built sites can include it in the page template.
Place it on the right pages
Firm markup on the home or contact page, Person markup on bio pages, BreadcrumbList sitewide, Article on posts. Avoid pasting the same LegalService block on every page with different details.
Validate
Run pages through Google's Rich Results Test for Google-supported features and the Schema Markup Validator for general schema.org correctness. Fix errors; review warnings.
Monitor and update
Check Search Console's enhancement reports for errors. When you move offices, add an attorney or change hours, update the schema the same day you update your site and Google Business Profile.
Mistakes That Waste the Effort
The common schema mistakes on law firm sites all come down to markup that doesn't match reality.
- Mismatched details. An old phone number in schema, a new one on the page and a third on Google Business Profile. This undermines exactly the consistency schema is supposed to provide.
- Marking up invisible content. Schema should describe what's on the page. Hidden FAQs or reviews written only for markup are a policy problem.
- Duplicate, conflicting blocks. A theme outputs one Organization block, a plugin outputs another and a developer added a third. Pick one source.
- Stuffing areaServed and knowsAbout. Listing every city in the state and every legal topic is the structured-data version of keyword stuffing.
- Set and forget. Schema installed years ago by a previous agency often references dead URLs and old addresses.
Schema is one piece of technical SEO, alongside website speed and Core Web Vitals and earning real authority through link building. The full set lives in our law firm marketing guides.
Is your schema helping or contradicting your listings?
We'll check your structured data against your website and Google Business Profile and flag outdated types, conflicting blocks and policy problems.
Frequently Asked Questions
Most law firms should use LegalService, a subtype of LocalBusiness on schema.org, for the firm itself, with one block per office. Each attorney gets Person markup on their bio page, linked to the firm with worksFor. Add BreadcrumbList for site structure and Article or BlogPosting for content. Schema.org describes the older Attorney type as deprecated in favor of LegalService.
Not directly. Google says structured data helps it understand page content and can make pages eligible for certain rich results, but it is not a ranking boost on its own. Its value for law firms is clarity and consistency: making your name, address, phone, attorneys and practice areas unambiguous to search engines and AI systems.
Generally no. Since August 2023, Google limits FAQ rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health websites. FAQPage markup remains valid and can stay on pages that show the same questions visibly, but a law firm should not expect expandable FAQ snippets in search results or pay for markup on that promise.
No. Google does not display star rich results for reviews a business publishes about itself on its own site, and marking up reviews that are not visible or are misleading can violate its structured data policies. Focus on earning reviews on your Google Business Profile, where they appear in local results.
Use Google's Rich Results Test to check eligibility for Google-supported features and the Schema Markup Validator to check schema.org syntax. Then watch the enhancement reports in Google Search Console for errors over time. Confirm the details in your markup match your visible pages and your Google Business Profile exactly.