How to Set Up and Optimize Your Google Business Profile as a Family Lawyer

Most local search clicks for legal services go to one of three results: the Map Pack. For family law, the searches driving those clicks — 'divorce lawyer near me', 'custody attorney [city]', 'family law firm [neighborhood]' — are high-intent and high-urgency. Someone searching at 11pm after a difficult conversation is not going to browse ten websites. They call one of the three firms that appears in the Map Pack.

Google Business Profile is the primary input Google uses to decide which three firms those are. Your website's organic ranking matters, but it is a separate signal from your GBP's local ranking. A firm with a mediocre website but a well-optimized, review-rich GBP will regularly outrank a firm with a polished site and a neglected profile.

Family law also has specific characteristics that affect GBP strategy:

• Sensitive search context: Clients often search privately or in distress. Your profile's tone, photos, and review language all contribute to whether they feel safe calling you.
• Geographic specificity: Family law is intensely local. County courthouse relationships, jurisdiction-specific procedures, and community reputation all matter — and your GBP is where that local signal lives.
• Compliance overlay: Review solicitation, service descriptions, and attorney credentials on your GBP must align with state bar advertising rules. This page covers optimization strategy — confirm specific compliance questions with your state bar or a legal ethics resource.

The sections below walk through every major GBP element in the order you should address them, starting with the fields that carry the most ranking weight.

Before optimizing anything, your GBP must be claimed and verified. If you have not done this, go to business.google.com, search for your firm name, claim the listing, and complete Google's postcard or phone verification. Do not create a duplicate if one already exists — merge or request ownership transfer instead.

Choosing the Right Primary Category

This is the single highest-impact field in your profile. For most family law practices, the correct primary category is Family Law Attorney. Do not use 'Lawyer' or 'Law Firm' as your primary — these are too broad and dilute your relevance signal for family-law-specific searches.

Add secondary categories that reflect your actual practice areas. Common additions include:

• Divorce Lawyer
• Child Custody Attorney
• Legal Services

Only add secondary categories that apply. Over-categorizing does not improve rankings and can create inconsistency signals.

Business Name

Your GBP name must match your official, legally registered firm name exactly as it appears on your website, bar directory listing, and signage. Do not add city names, practice area keywords, or descriptors (e.g., 'Smith & Associates — Chicago Divorce Lawyers'). This violates Google's guidelines and is a common trigger for profile suspension.

Address and Service Area

If clients visit your office, enter your physical address. If you serve clients across a region without a public-facing office, use the Service Area setting and hide your address. Do not do both — Google treats this as a signal conflict. Set your service area to the counties or cities you genuinely serve, not every city in the state.

Phone and Website

Use your primary office phone number — not a tracking number as your sole entry, as this can cause NAP inconsistency. Your website URL should point to your homepage or a location-specific landing page, not a contact form.

Google's local ranking algorithm rewards completeness. A partially filled profile competes at a disadvantage against a fully built-out one, even if the incomplete profile has more reviews. Work through these fields systematically.

Business Description

You have 750 characters. Use the first 250 most carefully — that is what appears before the 'More' truncation in most mobile views. Lead with what you do and who you serve. Do not use this field as an advertisement or include calls to action — Google can suppress descriptions that read as promotional copy. A grounded, informative description works better: what practice areas you handle, which courts you appear in, and what clients can expect from working with you.

Services

The Services section is underused by most law firms. Add each practice area as a separate service entry with its own name and description. Examples: Divorce, Legal Separation, Child Custody, Child Support Modification, Prenuptial Agreements, Domestic Violence Protective Orders. Each service description can include 300 characters — use them to describe what that service involves in plain language.

Attributes

Attributes include things like 'Identifies as women-led,' 'Online appointments,' 'Wheelchair accessible entrance,' and language availability. These affect filtered searches and are increasingly visible in profile display. Review all available attributes and enable every one that accurately applies to your firm.

Opening Hours

Keep hours accurate and updated, including holiday hours. Profiles with incorrect hours accumulate negative reviews from clients who arrived when you were closed — and those reviews are hard to remove.

Attorney Photos

Upload professional headshots of attorneys, interior and exterior office photos, and team photos. In our experience working with law firms, profiles with real location photos consistently outperform those using stock imagery in click-through engagement. Google also displays a 'street view' thumbnail by default — if your entrance is hard to identify, upload a clear exterior photo to override it.

Google Posts appear directly on your Business Profile in search results. They function like short announcements — visible for seven days (standard posts) or until you remove them (events and offers). For family law firms, posts serve two purposes: they signal to Google that your profile is actively managed, and they give potential clients additional context about your firm before they call.

Post Types to Use

• Updates: The standard post type. Use for firm news, community involvement, recent speaking engagements, or practical information about family law processes. Example: 'What to expect at your first divorce consultation in [County] — a brief overview of the process.'
• Events: If your firm hosts or sponsors community events, free consultations, or webinars, use the Event post type so the date renders clearly.
• Offers: Use sparingly and only for genuinely applicable offers (e.g., a free initial consultation). Verify this is permitted under your state bar's advertising rules before posting.

Publishing Cadence

Post at minimum once per week. This does not require writing long content — a 150-word post summarizing one frequently asked question you receive about custody modifications, for example, is useful to prospective clients and signals consistent activity to Google.

What Not to Post

Do not publish case outcomes or client stories in posts without explicit written consent, and even then, review ABA Model Rule 1.6 on confidentiality and your state bar's specific guidance on testimonials and case results in advertising. Do not make specific outcome guarantees — 'we win custody cases' is both ethically problematic and factually unsupportable. This is educational guidance — confirm your specific post content with your bar's advertising rules before publishing.

Tracking Post Performance

GBP Insights shows views and click-through data per post. After 60 days of weekly posting, you will have enough data to see which topics generate the most profile actions (calls, direction requests, website clicks).

Reviews are one of the three primary factors Google uses for local ranking (alongside relevance and proximity). For family law specifically, they are also a significant conversion driver — a client in distress who sees 40 recent reviews with specific, credible language about how the attorney communicated during a difficult time is far more likely to call than one who sees 8 generic reviews.

When and How to Request Reviews

The best moment to request a review is shortly after matter closure, when the client has experienced the outcome and the relationship is complete. Send a direct link to your GBP review form — found in your GBP dashboard under 'Get more reviews.' This removes friction. A brief, personal follow-up message works better than a mass email template.

Do not offer any incentive — discounts, gift cards, or referral credits — in exchange for reviews. This violates Google's policies and, depending on your state, bar advertising rules. Do not ask staff to post reviews, and do not use third-party review generation services that fabricate content. Beyond the ethical issues, Google's detection of inauthentic reviews has improved substantially and removals happen without warning.

Responding to Reviews

Respond to every review — positive and negative. For positive reviews, a brief, specific acknowledgment is more credible than a generic 'Thank you for your kind words.' For negative reviews, respond professionally without disclosing any client information. Even if the review is factually inaccurate, your response is visible to every future prospect reading your profile. ABA Model Rule 1.6 prohibits disclosing confidential information even to defend yourself — consult your state bar's ethics guidance if you receive a false negative review and are uncertain how to respond.

Review Volume and Velocity

A sudden spike of many reviews in a short period can trigger Google's spam filters. A steady, organic cadence of one to three reviews per month from real clients is more sustainable and less likely to be flagged than bursts of ten reviews following a marketing campaign.

The Q&A section of your GBP is frequently overlooked, but it carries meaningful weight for two reasons: Google indexes Q&A content and can surface it in search results, and any Google user — not just clients — can post questions (and answers) on your profile. If you do not populate this section yourself, you may find inaccurate or misleading content appearing without your knowledge.

Proactively Populate Q&A

Log into Google Maps, find your profile, and post the questions your intake team receives most often. Then answer them from your business account. Useful starting questions for family law firms include:

• Do you offer free initial consultations?
• Which counties do you practice in?
• Do you handle both contested and uncontested divorces?
• Can you represent me if my spouse has already hired an attorney?
• Do you offer payment plans?

Keep answers concise and factual. Do not include outcome guarantees or language that could be read as a formal legal opinion — this is a public-facing marketing channel, not a consultation.

Monitor for Third-Party Answers

Set up Google Alerts or check your profile weekly. If a third party answers one of your Q&A questions inaccurately, you can flag it, but you cannot always remove it. Your best defense is having your own accurate answer already in place — Google displays the 'most helpful' answer, which typically favors the business owner's response.

Ongoing Maintenance Checklist

• Update hours for holidays and firm closures
• Add new attorneys to the profile as team members when the feature is available in your category
• Review GBP Insights monthly for trends in search queries, profile views, and call volume
• Check for suggested edits from third parties — Google allows the public to suggest changes to your profile, and these can go live without your explicit approval
• Respond to new reviews within 48 hours

GBP optimization is not a one-time task. Profiles that are built and abandoned tend to accumulate third-party edits, stale information, and unanswered reviews — all of which erode the trust signals that got you into the Map Pack in the first place.