Serious-injury search strategy for a boutique trial firm

The challenge

When I asked ChatGPT to recommend a wrongful death lawyer in the firm’s city, a firm with an eight-figure-plus verdict record wasn’t named.

That firm was a three-attorney personal injury trial practice with the results most firms only advertise: a long record of seven-, eight- and nine-figure outcomes. Online, it looked much smaller than it was. It trailed local competitors by hundreds of reviews, its highest-value pages were thin or outdated, and AI assistants didn’t recommend it for its core case types.

The proof was all on its website. The trust signals Google and AI rely on were missing.

The diagnosis

• The gap was trust, not traffic. The firm had fewer than 50 Google reviews; the firms ranked above it in the local pack had 120 to 860. That effectively shut it out of review-gated channels like Local Services Ads.
• AI didn’t know it existed. ChatGPT did not name the firm for car accident or wrongful death recommendations in its city. This was a one-time spot check, not a ranking study, but it matched every other trust signal I found.
• Its proof wasn’t on the pages that mattered. The wrongful death page showed no results. The car accident page cited an insurance minimum that changed in 2025.
• The site made contact harder. It had two competing phone numbers, dated trust badges and a single form at the bottom of key pages.
• There was an opening. The local wrongful death pack showed competitors with 0 to 2 reviews.

The strategic execution

My guiding principle: close the trust gap before you pay for traffic, and gate every expansion on cost per signed case, not on clicks. That became a 90-day plan where each stage has to pass a check before the next one starts.

• Month 1: fix the foundation. Tie tracking to signed-case outcomes, move to one tracked phone number, optimize the Business Profile and citations, launch a compliant review system, and rewrite five priority pages so search engines and AI answer engines can cite them (generative engine optimization, or GEO).
• Month 2: test before spending. Test nearby markets with dedicated pages before spending on ads there.
• Month 3: decide by the numbers. Scale or cut by cost per qualified lead, using decision rules set in advance.
• Narrow, not broad. Paid search goes only to serious-injury terms where the firm’s proof is strongest, not generic clicks that national firms will always outbid. Review-gated ad channels stay capped until trust catches up.

The impact (projected)

The model shows 3 to 15 signed cases a month at about $2,000 to $10,000 per case, a path to 100+ reviews within six months, and stronger visibility in the case types where the firm’s proof is strongest.