Super Lawyers Profile: How Selection and Profiles Work

A Super Lawyers profile is the online page that goes with being selected to the Super Lawyers list, and the key fact is that you cannot sign up for it: selection comes from peer nominations, independent research and peer review, and Super Lawyers says buying a product has no part in it. Our take: treat Super Lawyers as an honor you earn and then manage, not a directory you register on. If you are selected, verify your information, check that your firm name, address and phone match everywhere else, and decide on any paid upgrade on its own merits. If you are not selected, spend the same effort on the free lawyer directories you can claim today. This guide covers how selection works on Super Lawyers’ own pages, what the free profile shows, what is sold on top and what it costs, how to edit a profile, and what it does for local SEO.

One note on sources: every Super Lawyers claim below comes from superlawyers.com, read in November 2026, mainly its selection process page, attorney FAQ and profile comparison page. Super Lawyers is a commercial publisher describing its own method, so what follows is its account, not an independent audit. In our own catalog, Super Lawyers is on both our attorneys and our legal citation lists, at position 9 on each, and our catalog labels it free.

How Super Lawyers selects lawyers

Super Lawyers calls its method a patented, multiphase process (it cites U.S. Patent No. 8,412,564) that runs every year, state by state. It says the process covers all firm sizes and more than 70 practice areas across the United States. The steps, in its words and order:

Step	What happens
1. Nominations	Lawyers nominate peers they have personally seen in action. Nominators must be licensed in the same state, and self-nominations are not allowed.
2. Independent research	Staff evaluate each candidate on 12 indicators of peer recognition and professional achievement.
3. Peer evaluation	The top-scoring candidates in each practice area form a blue ribbon panel and rate others in their practice area on a scale of one to five.
4. Final selection	Candidates are compared within four firm-size groups, and the highest point totals in each group are selected.
Before publication	Staff check each candidate’s standing with the licensing authority, each candidate avers they have not been subject to disciplinary or criminal proceedings, and staff run final internet searches and contact each lawyer to confirm the published information.

A few details change how you should think about it:

• Nominations are limited and policed. The nominations page caps a lawyer at 21 nominations (7 in-firm, 7 out-of-firm and 7 for Rising Stars). Nominations from lawyers at other firms count for more, in-firm nominations count only if enough out-of-firm nominations back them, and Super Lawyers says soliciting nominations can get them disregarded and may lead to disqualification.
• The staff can add candidates too. Names from readers, clients or marketing directors earn no points but can still enter the candidate pool.
• The 12 indicators are not weighted equally. They are verdicts and settlements, transactions, representative clients, experience, honors and awards, special licenses or certifications, position within the law firm, bar or professional activity, pro bono and community service, scholarly lectures and writings, education and employment background, and other outstanding achievements.
• About 5 percent of a state’s lawyers are selected. Super Lawyers says the top 5 percent of attorneys in each state make the list, and the top 2.5 percent make Rising Stars.
• Only attorneys who can be hired by the public are eligible, which the FAQ describes as private practice and legal aid attorneys.
• Selection is not permanent. The FAQ says that being listed one year does not guarantee you will be published the following year.

Rising Stars

Rising Stars follows the same process with one extra condition: the candidate must be 40 years old or younger, or in practice for 10 years or less. A lawyer who is not selected for Super Lawyers but meets either condition can be considered for Rising Stars.

Can you pay to be listed on Super Lawyers?

This is the question most people actually type, and Super Lawyers answers it directly in two places. The FAQ says it maintains a strict separation between research and advertising and that selected attorneys are published at no charge whether they advertise or not, and that advertising does not improve the chances of being listed. The selection page says there is no requirement to purchase any product for inclusion in the lists, and quotes a Special Master who reviewed the process as finding it clear from the record that Super Lawyers does not permit a lawyer to buy one’s way onto the list.

So the honest picture is two separate things that share a brand. The list is the selection process above. The paid products are marketing sold to lawyers who are already on it. Be wary of any outside firm that claims it can get you onto the list for a fee, because nothing on Super Lawyers’ pages offers that route.

What a selected lawyer’s profile includes

Super Lawyers’ profile comparison page sets out two tiers it calls Basic and Premium, and it says the basic profile is free to selectees and displays the primary information about the attorney. Here is how the page divides the features:

Feature	Basic (free to selectees)	Premium (paid)
Practice areas	Yes	Yes
Years selected	Yes	Yes
Photo	No	Yes
Professionally written biography	No	Yes
Honors and awards, verdicts and settlements, achievements	No	Yes
Link to your website	No	Yes
Phone and email links, contact form and buttons	No	Yes
Enhanced exposure in the directory	No	Yes
Peer comments (if activated)	No	Yes
Access to the Ask a Lawyer forum	No	Yes

Super Lawyers adds a traffic claim on the same page: 8x more traffic for lawyers with a premium profile than a basic profile, with a footnote saying it is based on 2022/23 Super Lawyers data. It is the company’s own figure about its own products, so read it as a sales statement. The comparison table does not say whether a basic profile shows a street address, so open your own profile and read what it displays.

What is sold on top, and what it costs

Super Lawyers’ marketing solutions page lists the products without prices: digital attorney and firm badges, regional and national print advertising, online products (Premium Online Attorney Profile, Expanded Online Attorney Profile, Premium Online Firm Profile, Super Lawyers TopSpot, Super Lawyers Spotlight and Ask Super Lawyers), commemorative recognition pieces, and a content marketing service called Legal Leader. The page says the selection will always be free to view on SuperLawyers.com.

Prices appear on the store pages behind each lawyer’s account. At the time of writing (November 2026), a Super Lawyers store page showed:

Product	Price shown
Expanded Online Attorney Profile	$75 a month, annual subscription
Premium Online Attorney Profile	$174 a month, annual subscription
Premium Online Firm Profile	$400 a month, annual subscription

We opened two lawyers’ store pages and both showed these prices, but each lawyer’s store is personal, so confirm the price and the cancellation terms on your own order screen. We did not find renewal or refund wording on the pages we opened. An annual subscription means paying for a year, so the monthly figure understates the commitment.

What to do when you are selected

Super Lawyers’ FAQ is specific about the first steps, and skipping them has a cost:

1. Verify your information. A selected attorney must complete online data verification through Verify Info and Edit Your Information, then save. Only those who verify are listed in their state’s print publications.
2. Edit your details. Log in at my.superlawyers.com, open Edit Your Information on your dashboard and use the User Information Manager. Super Lawyers says edits appear in its search results within 24 hours.
3. Use the right words. The FAQ says a selected lawyer should not be called a Super Lawyer as a title. It asks for wording such as having been named to the 2025 Minnesota Super Lawyers list, or the Rising Stars list, with the correct year and state.
4. Add the badge and announce it. Every profile page links to a personalized badge you can place on your site, and Super Lawyers offers announcement templates for press releases, email and social posts. Starting in 2026 it says attorneys and firms may announce a selection immediately after being notified.
5. Check your photo and contact data. A photo needs an Expanded or Premium profile, at least 500 pixels wide.

If someone at your firm handles marketing, the FAQ also covers firm manager access, which is the place to look for how that person gets into your profile.

Can you remove or claim a Super Lawyers profile?

Neither topic is covered in the attorney FAQ or on the for-lawyers hub, which cover editing only. We did not find a claim form, because profiles are created from selection, not from a search-and-claim flow like the one on some directories. We also did not find a removal or opt-out process. If you need a profile corrected or removed, contact Super Lawyers through its site and keep the reply in writing. For the cancellation of a paid profile, use your account’s order screen and read its terms, since we could not confirm the renewal rules.

Does a Super Lawyers profile help local SEO?

It helps as recognition more than as a citation. A citation is a public record of your firm’s name, address and phone, and the free profile shows less of that than most free directory pages do, because the comparison page lists the website link and the phone and email links as paid features. We found no ranking claim about its profiles in local search on its pages, and we are not aware of an independent source that shows one.

What is defensible: a selected lawyer’s page is a trusted, widely recognized mention of your name, practice areas and years selected, which supports the identity checks search engines and AI assistants do when they compare sources. The value is real only if your details agree everywhere. Run your firm through the free NAP checker after you edit your profile, and read our guide to finding and fixing duplicate listings if the same lawyer appears twice under different firm names.

Free lawyer directories to claim meanwhile

Selection happens once a year and is not available to everyone, so build your base on profiles you can claim today:

• Justia. A free lawyer profile you can claim: see our Justia lawyer profile guide.
• Avvo. A free profile with a rating and reviews: see how to claim your Avvo profile.
• Your Google Business Profile and your state bar’s own member directory, which are the profiles clients see first.
• Practitioner pages. If you are a solo or one of many lawyers at a firm, our post on practitioner listings explains how the individual and the firm should relate.

For the wider legal set in our catalog, see the legal citation sites list, or pick your country and industry in the local citation finder.

Common mistakes with a Super Lawyers profile

• Believing you can buy selection. Super Lawyers says you cannot, and a paid profile does not change whether you are on the list.
• Calling yourself a Super Lawyer. Use the wording Super Lawyers asks for, with the year and state.
• Skipping verification. Only attorneys who verify are listed in the print publications of their state.
• Paying for a profile without checking the term. The prices we saw were annual subscriptions.
• Letting firm details drift. If the Super Lawyers page shows an old firm name or phone, it contradicts the rest of your listings.
• Chasing the badge instead of the base. An honor does not replace a claimed, accurate profile on the free directories above.

Super Lawyers alongside your other citations

Think of Super Lawyers as the top layer of a legal presence: a Google Business Profile and the free claimed directories at the bottom, honors and client reviews above them. Everything below the honors layer is yours to build whether or not you are selected this year.

If you want your name, address and phone kept consistent across the general and legal directories, see our citation building service for law firms.