Key Findings
- 79.2% of law firm websites have some form of structured data -- but presence alone means little. One in five sites (20.8%) has no structured data at all.
- JSON-LD dominates at 78.5%. Microdata appears on 18.5% of sites, and RDFa usage is effectively zero across all 303 sites analyzed.
- Only 49.2% use legal-specific schema. Half of all law firm websites fail to tell search engines they are a legal practice using LegalService, Attorney, or LocalBusiness types.
- LegalService is the most common legal type at 37.6%, but Attorney schema appears on just 6.3% of sites -- a massive missed opportunity for individual practitioner visibility.
- Generic types dominate: WebSite (61.7%), WebPage (54.8%), and Organization (51.2%) are far more common than any legal-specific markup, suggesting most structured data comes from CMS defaults rather than intentional SEO strategy.
About This Research
Structured data is the language search engines use to understand what a web page is about. For law firms, it means the difference between Google guessing that your homepage describes a legal practice and Google knowing it -- complete with practice areas, office locations, attorney credentials, and client reviews.
When implemented correctly, structured data unlocks rich results: star ratings in search listings, FAQ accordions, enhanced local pack appearances, and knowledge panel features. When missing or generic, a firm's website is just another HTML document in a sea of billions.
We wanted to know: how many law firm websites actually use structured data, and how many use the legal-specific types that matter most? In March 2026, we crawled over 300 law firm websites drawn from Google's top organic results across 25 high-growth U.S. markets and parsed every structured data block we found.
Methodology
We ran 50 Google searches (25 markets x 2 practice areas) using queries in the format "[practice area] lawyer in [city], [state]." From each search, we extracted the top organic results, yielding a raw pool of URLs that we deduplicated to 303 unique law firm domains.
For each domain, we fetched the homepage HTML and parsed it three ways:
- JSON-LD: Extracted all
<script type="application/ld+json">blocks, parsed the JSON, and recursively walked the object tree to identify every@typedeclared. - Microdata: Scanned for HTML elements with
itemscopeanditemtypeattributes, extracting the schema type from eachitemtypeURL. - RDFa: Searched for elements with
typeofandvocabattributes that reference schema.org.
We classified a site as having "legal-specific schema" if it included any of: LegalService, Attorney, or LocalBusiness (when used on a law firm site). All parsing was done with Cheerio, a server-side HTML parser, ensuring we captured exactly what search engine crawlers would see.
The Numbers at a Glance
Format Adoption
JSON-LD is the clear winner. Google has recommended JSON-LD as its preferred structured data format since 2015, and law firm websites have largely followed suit. Microdata -- the older, attribute-based format baked into HTML elements -- still appears on nearly one in five sites, often as a remnant of WordPress themes or older website builds. RDFa is extinct in this sample.
| Format | Sites | % of 303 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| JSON-LD | 238 | 78.5% | Google-recommended; script-tag based |
| Microdata | 56 | 18.5% | Attribute-based; often from CMS themes |
| RDFa | 0 | 0.0% | Effectively unused in legal websites |
| None | 63 | 20.8% | No structured data of any kind |
Note that some sites use both JSON-LD and Microdata simultaneously (typically JSON-LD for explicit schema blocks and Microdata embedded in theme markup), which is why the individual format percentages sum to more than 79.2%.
Most Common Schema Types
The most frequently occurring types are generic web infrastructure -- WebSite, WebPage, Organization -- that most CMS platforms inject automatically. The first legal-specific type, LegalService, does not appear until the tenth position. This tells a clear story: most law firm structured data is CMS-generated boilerplate, not strategic markup.
| # | Schema Type | Sites | % of 303 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WebSite | 187 | 61.7% |
| 2 | WebPage | 166 | 54.8% |
| 3 | Organization | 155 | 51.2% |
| 4 | SearchAction | 149 | 49.2% |
| 5 | PostalAddress | 143 | 47.2% |
| 6 | ImageObject | 141 | 46.5% |
| 7 | BreadcrumbList | 133 | 43.9% |
| 8 | ListItem | 133 | 43.9% |
| 9 | ReadAction | 117 | 38.6% |
| 10 | LegalService | 114 | 37.6% |
| 11 | EntryPoint | 112 | 37.0% |
| 12 | PropertyValueSpecification | 104 | 34.3% |
| 13 | GeoCoordinates | 94 | 31.0% |
| 14 | Person | 56 | 18.5% |
| 15 | OpeningHoursSpecification | 52 | 17.2% |
Notable absences from the top 15: AggregateRating (15.2%), which enables star ratings in search results, and Attorney (6.3%), the schema type purpose-built for individual legal practitioners.
Legal-Specific Schema
Only 149 of 303 sites (49.2%) include any legal-specific schema markup. The breakdown among those that do:
| Legal Schema Type | Sites | % of 303 | What It Signals |
|---|---|---|---|
| LegalService | 114 | 37.6% | The firm provides legal services (practice areas, jurisdiction) |
| LocalBusiness | 31 | 10.2% | A physical business location (address, hours, geo) |
| Attorney | 19 | 6.3% | An individual legal practitioner (name, credentials, bar number) |
LegalService: common but incomplete
LegalService is the most adopted legal type, appearing on 37.6% of sites. However, having the type declared is only half the battle. Many implementations include only the basics -- name, address, phone -- while omitting high-value properties like areaServed (the geographic areas the firm covers), knowsAbout (specific practice areas), and hasOfferCatalog (the services offered). These properties are what transform a generic business listing into a rich, searchable legal entity in Google's knowledge graph.
Attorney: the biggest missed opportunity
Only 19 sites (6.3%) use the Attorney schema type. This is remarkable given that attorney profiles are central to how clients choose law firms. Attorney schema can include credentials, bar admissions, areas of practice, education, and professional affiliations -- all signals that strengthen E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) in Google's quality assessment. For firms with multiple attorneys, each practitioner page should have its own Attorney markup.
LocalBusiness: the generic fallback
31 sites (10.2%) use LocalBusiness instead of or alongside LegalService. While LocalBusiness is not wrong, it is generic -- it tells Google "this is a business with a physical location" but says nothing about the legal industry. LegalService is a more specific subtype that inherits all LocalBusiness properties while adding legal-specific context. Firms using only LocalBusiness are leaving specificity on the table.
What Top Sites Do Differently
We compared sites with comprehensive structured data (legal-specific types plus supporting types like AggregateRating, FAQPage, and BreadcrumbList) against sites with no structured data at all. The patterns are consistent.
Sites with rich schema tend to:
- Use JSON-LD exclusively (no legacy Microdata mixed in)
- Declare LegalService or Attorney as the primary type, not just Organization
- Include PostalAddress with full street address and GeoCoordinates for Google Maps integration
- Add OpeningHoursSpecification so Google can display hours in search results
- Implement BreadcrumbList for navigation-aware search snippets
- Include AggregateRating when they have reviews to display star ratings in SERPs
Sites with no schema tend to:
- Be older WordPress installations with outdated themes
- Lack any SEO plugin (Yoast, RankMath, and similar tools auto-generate basic schema)
- Have no meta descriptions, incomplete title tags, and other signs of minimal SEO investment
- Miss rich result opportunities entirely -- no stars, no FAQ dropdowns, no enhanced listings
The gap is not subtle. A site with complete LegalService schema, AggregateRating, and FAQPage markup competes for multiple rich result slots in a single search. A site with no schema competes for a plain blue link.
Limitations
- Homepage only: We analyzed structured data on each site's homepage. Inner pages (practice area pages, attorney bio pages, blog posts) may have additional or different schema markup that this study does not capture.
- Point-in-time snapshot: All data was collected on March 2, 2026. Websites update their markup regularly, and CMS plugin updates can add or remove schema overnight.
- Organic results only: Our sample comes from Google's top organic search results, which may skew toward sites that already have stronger SEO fundamentals. The true adoption rate across all law firm websites is likely lower.
- Property completeness not scored: We measured whether a schema type was present, not whether every recommended property within that type was populated. A site declaring LegalService with only a name and URL was counted the same as one with full address, hours, practice areas, and reviews.
- No causal claims: We report correlations between schema completeness and other site characteristics. We cannot determine whether structured data implementation drives better rankings or whether better-resourced firms simply do both.