This is the next post in my series on website options for attorneys. My last discussion looked at whether Scorpion Web Design is a good option for law firms. I’ve also looked at things attorneys should look for in a web developer.
In this post, I’m going to look at whether Justia is a good option for managing a lawyer’s web presence. After trying to deal with Justia, talking to their clients, and evaluating some of their websites, all I can say is it’ll do as a low-cost solution, but lacks exclusivity.
I’ve concluded that the service may not be the best option for law firms because of the feedback I received from attorneys and several SEO “red flags” I found in examining various Justia built websites. I’ve found that it appears law firm websites powered by Justia suffer from similar issues.
During this review, I’ll evaluate Justia as it pertains to cost, the potential to do well in organic search through SEO, adaptability to the changing web environment, and some other considerations. First, let’s dive into my experience in trying to review Justia.
My experience in evaluating Justia as an attorney’s website option
Before discussing whether it is a good option for attorneys, I would like to discuss my experience attempting to reach out to the company for this review. When I first reviewed Justia in 2014 & 2015, I found the company’s lack of responsiveness to be alarming. I reached out to Justia multiple times to discuss their services and never received a message back.
Over time I have received feedback from many attorneys who are customers of Justia, and they shared some of their experiences with me. I also analyzed multiple Justia sites from a technical and SEO perspective and reviewed literature about the company.
Below is a pie chart that shows the feedback of 30+ attorneys who have hired Justia in a survey conducted by Chris Dreyer of Rankings.io.
I’ll be basing my review on an analysis I performed on multiple existing Justia sites and attorneys’ feedback I have received on the company.
Let’s jump right into costs.
EVALUATING THE COST OF JUSTIA’S WEBSITE SERVICES
The cost of Justia’s services appears to be variable. The variance in prices is based on the desired services and the number of attorneys in a law firm.
If, for example, the attorney wants Justia to write their content instead of the attorney writing it, there will be an extra charge.
Given my inability to speak with anyone at the company, I could not get a specific breakdown of Justia’s price structure. After digging online, Justia appears to cost anywhere around $1,700 for a couple of attorneys to less than $3,600 annually for a firm of ten attorneys.
This is what Chris Dreyer, a law firm marketing professional, has to say about lawyers using Justia and its value:
THE SEO POTENTIAL OF JUSTIA SITES
I looked at several factors on over seven different Justia websites. I base my opinion on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and other factors relevant to SEO. I found several problems across these sites, which leaves me with the conclusion that you get what you pay for with Justia. They’re not the worse choice for attorneys, but far from the best.
The first technical factor I examined with Justia’s websites is the loading speed. Google considers page speed a critical ranking factor in search. To assist webmasters with making sure that a site loads properly, Google has the “Page Speed Insights” tool, which I used to run my tests.
This is a free tool from Google, which assists webmasters in knowing:
1) Whether a site loads quickly enough
2) What steps should be taken to speed up a website
In other words — this tool is Google telling webmasters whether a site meets Google’s criteria and what needs to be done to fix any issues.
Of the 4 Justia sites I tested, all had passing desktop scores, except one was slower on mobile.
After all of the tests I ran, I was fairly impressed that Justia has improved their clients’ page speeds since this review’s original debut in 2014.
An issue I saw with certain pages on Justia’s clients’ sites is that they had a poor header element structure. Heading structure is essential for assisting Google in understanding the purpose of a page. For example, a common issue was they had a <1> element, were missing <2> and <3> and used several <4> elements. In attorney terms, think of this as writing a legal brief which is outlined like this:
A. The Case should be dismissed.
A(4) sub-point of why this case should be dismissed
See the point? It’s missing A(1)-(3). Search engines will undoubtedly take issue with improperly formatted heading structure.
One site I looked at had underscores in some URLs. This is also frowned upon by the search engines. But overall, I didn’t see this issue too prevalent throughout their sites.
A Caveat with Justia’s Content
The content I saw on the sites was problematic. I saw multiple instances where a large part of the content was devoted to blocking quoting statutes. This is a massive mistake as such is merely generating content for the sake of generating it. I talked about this more at length when I mentioned how attorneys can tell Google will view their website as spam. The extent to which I saw this practice on these sites was alarming.
Possible Malicious Backlinks
Another big problem I had, as with Scorpion, is the high number of backlinks reported for these sites. While I couldn’t discuss the issue with anyone at Justia, the high number of backlinks appear to be unnatural. In my opinion, if I had a Justia site, I would be concerned over the possibility of being an algorithm update away from losing my search ranking. Without input from Justia, I would be concerned about this point.
Given that ranking for search terms is competitive and Justia is more for the budget-minded, their results in organic search are usually okay — at best.
JUSTIA WEBSITES AND THE CHANGING WEB ENVIRONMENT
The sites I looked at did contain a responsive web design, which is good for mobile devices. I did note, however, that one of the sites was using flash in its desktop version. Given the extent that flash is being phased out of the web, including the desktop, I found this concerning.
All-in-all, though, the company does appear to be attempting to optimize for mobile. Most Justia sites that I tested, also had good Page Speed insight scores for mobile.
SHOULD ATTORNEYS UTILIZE JUSTIA FOR THEIR WEBSITE
I could only recommend Justia as a website provider for attorneys looking for a low-cost solution. I found their customer service to be very alarming, and the least-bit helpful during my first review. For firms looking to be competitive in the SERPs, I believe attorneys can find a much better option. And if lawyers do choose Justia, I’d suggest onboarding extra help for a more personalized marketing experience.
Have you used Justia for your firm’s web marketing needs? Please let us know about your experience in the comment section below.
While I think some of your comments have validity, I would disagree with many and with the conclusion. While I don’t advocate using Justia for your main site, I currently using them for one of my “feeder” blogs and I’ve generally had good dealings with their technical and customer service reps.
Here is the URL for my Justia Blog if you would like to check it out:
http://www.californiaaccidentattorneysblog.com/
I’d welcome any feedback.
BTW: I think you are spot on about 90 percent of the time in the advice you give on this blog!
Thanks for the feedback and compliment Steven. Keep in mind that my review in terms of customer service is based on my attempts to reach Justia as well as feedback I received from three attorneys I reached out to. Of the three, one did have very good things to say about the company and the other two were the polar opposite. They’ve been around for quite a while and I’m sure they wouldn’t still be in business if they didn’t have some happy customers.
They are the worst I wasted $8,000 on justia. I would not recommend them. They are worse than findlaw, and they are also a waste of money.
Justia.com is a backlink monster. It’s not clear whether the practice is white-hat or black-hat, but in doing some research a few months ago, I found a few local law firms with *hundreds* of backlinks from justia.com.
Hi Michael,
Having a backlink doesn’t help if it doesn’t pass page rank. By this I mean that Google has, for a while, not counted a link from paid directories such as Justia when considering how a site should rank. I’m not sure whether or not the Justia links pass page rank but my bet would be that they don’t.
I am an attorney and I do all the seo for my small practice. I put a free profile with a link to my home page on Justia’s website several years ago and now I have over 9,000 backlinks from their website to my home page! They also have other websites that they manage such as oyez and techlawyers, both of which have over 3,000 links to my site as well. I have tried to get them to take them down but they tell me that I have to delete my Justia profile altogether and that then, eventually, all of these thousands of links will go away. Is having 9,000 from justia, and over 3,000 from several of their sister sites killing my seo right now or is it just not passing any link juice but not hurting it most likely? Can someone tell me if I should delete that profile or not (I am leaning towards deleting it as soon as possible but just wanted to find a forum to check first)? Any response would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Steven,
I’m not sure if Justia links are currently “no follow” or “do follow.” If they are no follow then Google wouldn’t consider them in a page rank calculation and it wouldn’t be an issue. Buying links is a violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and if they see that a large percentage of your link portfolio is from a purchased directory then your site may be “dinged” as a result.
That being said, if the links are just naturally flowing from your having set up a profile then I wouldn’t worry about it. If, on the other hand, the links are coming from low level content being placed all over Justia’s site, through discussion “link dropping,” then I would use Google’s disavow tool to ensure the search engine does not consider them.
I hope this helps.
Luke –
Thanks for the the helpful post on the pros/cons of Justia. I was looking at whether I should set up a profile on their site. One of my competitors has 100+ backlinks from Justia and he is doing okay for now. Although you don’t seemed too concerned about getting dinged for a justia link, I think I’ll pass based on Steve’s comment. Google can always tweak its algorithm and I think the legal directories are abused enough that eventually Google will penalize them.
I agree in not setting up profiles on numerous directories Alex. There are a few I would do, for review purposes, but Justia is not one of them.
Luke,
Thank you for the information. With so many legal directories it is hard for me to decide what to sign up for and who to decline. My philosophy on legal directories is if they can help me attract more traffic and clients is how I evaluate them. As far as SEO and building links, that is an added value but not necessary as I understand that most paid links shouldn’t be used as a back link strategy. I would love to hear your opinion on that.
Hi John,
Personally I don’t see directories as a worthwhile use of money. The reason being that you would be paying for a listing but you don’t own or control the directory. If the directory begins to drop in search, due to mismanagement on their part, then you lose a benefit you have been relying on through no fault of your own. Also, you have to continue to pay for that listing every month.
I always, always, always (always) suggest an approach of investing heavily in one’s own content that they will own and control. This eliminates recurring monthly expenses (which means lower overhead) and insulates you from someone else’s mismanagement.
I hope this helps.
Just two cents more on Justia, I’ve come to the opinion that Justia actually fabricates referrals [with real people calling/writing] in order to entice attorneys using their paid services. I note i will get 2-3 referrals every month followed within 2-3 days by a sales call. I wasted my time the first couple months but I delete them now.
Thanks for the input Hedi,
Interesting. I’m assuming you mean directory referrals?