Be the firm Chicago clients find.
Chicago's legal community runs from the Loop's large firms to neighborhood and suburban practices. Local search visibility is what separates the firms clients find from the ones they never see.
What we do for Chicago firms.
Answer Engine Optimization in Chicago
When a prospective client asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI for a lawyer, your firm should be the name it returns.Detail →02SEO & Local Search in Chicago
When someone searches for a lawyer, the firms in the local pack get the calls. We build the foundations that put yours there.Detail →03Content & Authority in Chicago
Practice-area writing and thought leadership that reads like counsel, the fuel that ranks you and gets you cited.Detail →04Website Design & Development in Chicago
The foundation it all runs on: a fast, legal-specific site built for search, answer engines, and the way firms win clients.Detail →Insurance and coverage, class action and complex litigation, commercial and transactional work, and a substantial appellate bar.
Chicago is a large market that behaves more like a single market than Los Angeles does, which makes city-level terms genuinely contested and genuinely winnable. It also has an unusually institutional legal culture, so bar association standing and legal press presence weigh more in a prospective client's assessment here than they do in newer markets.
The sources that count in Chicago.
Off-site authority is the hardest part of legal search to earn and the most durable once earned. These are the institutions that carry weight in this market, and the places we work to have a firm properly represented.
Bar associations
- The Chicago Bar AssociationCommittee involvement is a verifiable credential in a market that values them.
- Illinois State Bar AssociationStatewide section membership and directory presence.
Legal press
- Chicago Daily Law BulletinThe daily legal paper for the market, published by Law Bulletin Media.
Courts
- U.S. District Court, Northern District of IllinoisFederal venue for Chicago and northern Illinois.
- Circuit Court of Cook CountyOne of the largest unified court systems in the world.
Everything we publish for a Illinois firm is written against the Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct, rule 7.1, administered by Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission. Those rules govern what a firm may claim about results, how testimonials and reviews may be used, and whether a lawyer may be described as a specialist. We are not your ethics counsel and final review belongs with you, but we build to them rather than discovering them after publication.
A partner that understands the Chicago market.
Built with Illinois bar advertising rules in mind, informed by the Chicago Bar Association.
Legal search is competitive and regulated
Legal is one of the most contested markets in search, and it is bound by ABA Model Rule 7.1 and state bar advertising rules. We build visibility that performs and stays compliant.
Clients search for problems, not services
People look for a specific issue in a specific place, and they ask AI the same way. Your search and content have to match how clients actually phrase their problem.
Authority has to be earned, not claimed
Both Google and the answer engines reward genuine, substantiated authority: real expertise, clean structure, honest signals. There is no shortcut, and the shortcuts get penalized.
We have specialized in legal for ten years
We understand these problems because we have run search and content for more than forty law firms as WhatArmy over the last ten years, not because we read about it.