What is a 'Super Lawyer' — and is it worth it for your marketing?

"Super Lawyer" is one of those phrases that sounds official and is a little fuzzy in practice. Firms display the badge, prospective clients half-recognize it, and vendors sell packages around it — but a lot of attorneys aren't quite sure what the designation is, what it costs, or whether it does anything for their marketing. Here's the plain version.

What it actually is

Super Lawyers is a rating service published by Thomson Reuters, the same company behind Westlaw. According to its published selection process, it names attorneys through a mix of peer nominations, independent research on a set of indicators, and peer evaluation by practice area. The service says it selects up to five percent of the attorneys in a state each year. There's a companion list, "Rising Stars," for newer attorneys — those 40 or younger, or in practice ten years or less — that recognizes up to two and a half percent.

So it's selective, and the selection isn't something you buy. That's the part worth holding onto, because the rest of the story is about a different thing entirely.

Free to be selected, paid to promote — know which you're buying

This is where most of the confusion lives. Being named to the list is free. You don't pay to be selected, and paying doesn't get you selected. What costs money comes afterward: an enhanced online profile, licensed use of the badge, printed plaques, and advertising with the service. Those are marketing products sold to people who've already been recognized.

Neither part is a scam — the recognition is real and the products are real — but they're separate decisions. The first is a credential you earned. The second is an ad buy. Conflating them is how firms end up feeling like they "paid to be a Super Lawyer," which isn't what happened.

Is the badge worth displaying?

If you've genuinely been selected, yes — displaying it is a reasonable use of a real trust signal. A specific, verifiable, third-party recognition is worth more on a page than any amount of self-description, and it belongs in the same category as named attorneys and genuine reviews: specifics beat adjectives. Keep it honest — show the year, don't let a badge from 2019 imply it's current, and don't imply the designation means more than a peer-nominated list means.

Is it worth paying for the profile and ads?

That's a straight marketing-spend question, and it deserves a marketing-spend answer: measure it. A directory upsell is worth what it returns in actual inquiries, and the honest way to know is to track whether the enhanced profile or ads send you anyone who becomes a client. Plenty of firms pay for the profile out of a vague sense that they should, and never check whether it does anything. Before you renew, look at what it's actually brought you.

1. Claim the free listing and make sure your name, firm, and details are accurate.
2. Before paying for an enhanced profile or ads, write down what you expect it to return.
3. Add the badge to your site with the year, honestly and without overstatement.
4. At renewal, check whether the paid part sent you any actual inquiries — and drop it if it didn't.

The compliance footnote

How you display the badge is governed by your state's attorney-advertising rules, and it isn't uniform. Some states have specifically restricted superlative or comparative claims — and "super" is a superlative — or require disclaimers about how the rating was determined. The underlying standard almost everywhere is that the claim can't be false or misleading, which is the heart of Rule 7.1. We're a marketing agency, not your ethics counsel, so take the specifics of how and whether to display it to someone who is.

Where it fits in the bigger picture

A Super Lawyers listing is one signal among many, and a modest one. It's part of the same authority picture as your bio, your reviews, and your genuine mentions elsewhere — the material that helps both people and, when it's accurate and consistent, the systems trying to summarize you. It won't rank you and it won't get you cited; the things that actually influence whether an engine references your firm are elsewhere. Treat the badge as a small, honest credit, not a strategy.

If you want a clear read on which of your directory listings and badges are genuinely helping — and which are just recurring invoices — the free review looks at your whole authority footprint, not one line item.