In all honesty, link building for law firms *does* work—but only if it is done right. Like everything in marketing, it is one of those things that takes time and money to implement but is important for authority and especially for super competitive legal niches.
The key is that not all links are created equal. Having a number of quality, relevant links will help, especially if they come from legal directories, news sites, or even niche blogs. However, low-quality or cheap links will not help at all and may even harm you.
But again, this is not something you should count on. The law firms that actually see results from link building have typically also implemented:
- On-page SEO
- Quality, intent-driven content
- Local SEO
- And only then link building
I have personally witnessed law firms see improved rankings from link building, but only if they were already well-optimized to begin with.
And, of course, a lot of folks will be using sites such as attorney-rankings. com to work on legal SEO and authority building in particular, as opposed to doing some kind of random outreach.
So, yeah, it’s not a waste, but it is a long-term play. If you’re looking for a quick fix, ads might be more attractive to you, but if you’re looking for long-term results, backlinks matter.