SEO for a law firm isn't fundamentally different from SEO for any other local service business, but the specifics - what to write about, how to structure practice-area pages, and how long it realistically takes - are worth knowing before you pay an agency a retainer to do it for you, or before you decide it's not worth doing at all.
What Google is actually trying to work out
When someone searches "employment lawyer Toronto," Google is trying to figure out which pages are actually about employment law, actually relevant to Toronto, and trustworthy enough to send someone to for a decision that matters. That's it. Every specific tactic - title tags, headings, backlinks, reviews - exists to answer one of those three questions more clearly for a page that's genuinely about that topic.
One page per practice area, not one page for everything
A single "Practice Areas" page listing ten services in a few sentences each competes poorly against a firm with a dedicated, specific page for each service. A standalone page for "Family Law in Ottawa" that actually discusses custody, support, and divorce process in Ontario will out-rank a generic paragraph on a firm's homepage almost every time, because it gives Google - and the reader - much more to work with.
Local SEO basics for a firm with a physical office
Your address needs to appear consistently on your website (not just buried in a footer image), match your Google Business Profile exactly, and ideally appear on a dedicated contact or location page if you have more than one office. City names belonging to your actual service area should show up naturally in your page content - not stuffed in, but present, because that's part of how Google connects a page to a geography.
Content that ranks vs. content that doesn't
Generic advice that could apply to any province rarely ranks well because it's competing against thousands of similar generic pages. Specific, locally-grounded content - the actual courthouse a case is heard at, a rule that's genuinely different in your province, a process step that surprises people - tends to rank better and, more importantly, actually helps the person reading it decide to call you rather than the firm with the generic version of the same page.
How long this actually takes
A new page on a low-authority site typically takes a few months to show meaningful movement, and competitive city + practice-area terms can take longer. This isn't a channel to rely on if you need clients next week - that's what directories and paid ads are for in the meantime - but it's one of the few channels where the traffic doesn't disappear the moment you stop paying for it.
When SEO isn't worth doing yet
If your firm doesn't have a website that's at least technically sound - fast, mobile-friendly, secure (https) - fixing that comes first; content on a broken foundation won't rank regardless of quality. And if you're a brand-new solo practice with zero online presence, a directory listing and a complete Google Business Profile will likely produce results faster than investing heavily in original content before you have any.
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LawDB is a Canadian legal directory covering Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia. Basic listings are free.