The Measurement
Two instruments, one date. On July 27, 2026 we pulled organic and map-pack results for 270 real law-firm search queries across Edmonton, top-20 deep, desktop and mobile separately. Those 270 queries carry 141,400 searches per month. In parallel we ran a 25-cell Share of Local Voice geo-grid: a 5-by-5 uniform lattice, cells 1.8 kilometres apart, each one a real mobile local-finder search for “law firm” run from that exact point, which rostered the top 25 firms and captured their last 18 months of client reviews, 1,712 in all. This is the same measurement DecodeLocal opens every engagement with, applied to a whole category at once.
One structural note before the numbers: the measured footprint of this market is small. The candidate roster's own geography spans roughly six kilometres, centred on downtown. Dentists spread across the entire metro; law firms cluster. That concentration shapes everything below, because when every competitor sits in the same square kilometres, proximity stops differentiating and reviews plus relevance decide the map.
Where the Demand Sits
The near-me cluster alone carries 35,430 of the market’s monthly searches. “Lawyer near me” and “lawyers near me” are 12,100 each, the two biggest queries in the whole pull. But here is what makes legal different from every other category we have measured: the top 10 queries hold just 45 percent of the market’s volume. In our dentist study the top 10 held 77.8 percent. The law-firm market’s long tail holds the majority of its demand, unlike dentistry’s head-term concentration, because legal demand splits by practice area: family, injury, immigration, criminal, real estate, wills, employment, each its own sub-market with its own buyers.
The Query Universe, Snapshot
| # | Keyword | Searches / month |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | lawyer near me | 12,100 |
| 2 | lawyers near me | 12,100 |
| 3 | law firm near me | 6,600 |
| 4 | family lawyer near me | 6,600 |
| 5 | personal injury lawyer near me | 6,600 |
| 6 | immigration lawyer near me | 4,400 |
| 7 | employment lawyer near me | 4,400 |
| 8 | law office near me | 3,600 |
| 9 | divorce lawyer near me | 3,600 |
| 10 | criminal lawyer near me | 3,600 |
| 11 | family lawyer Edmonton | 3,600 |
| 12 | Edmonton family lawyer | 3,600 |
| 13 | family law Edmonton | 3,600 |
| 14 | divorce lawyer Edmonton | 3,600 |
| 15 | Edmonton divorce lawyer | 3,600 |
Source: keyword-metrics sheet of the July 27, 2026 pull, volume scoped to Canada. The paired 3,600s are word-order variants Google reports as separate keywords.
Demand by Practice Area
Monthly search volume by category, all 270 keywords
Fifteen categories summing to 141,400/mo. Family and divorce is the largest named practice area at 28,940/mo; urgent “charged with” queries carry almost no tracked volume, exactly as we found with dental emergencies.
Who Wins It, and Why
This is the finding that defines the market: the local pack rendered on 88 percent of the tracked queries, yet only 32.1 percent of map-pack placements also rank organic top 10 on the same page. And when you line the two columns up, they are owned by different firms. No firm in the market holds both the map-pack grid and the organic column at once.
The map layer: won on reviews and presence
- Chadi & Ibrahim LLP holds the number-one map-pack position in 24 of 25 measured grid cells
- James H. Brown & Associates sits top-3 in 22 of 25 cells on 1,625 reviews
- Assiff Law Office: a perfect 5.0 across 2,108 reviews, top-3 in 7 cells
- The map rewards review mass, proximity, and profile discipline, not website authority
The organic layer: won on pages and authority
- McCuaig Desrochers and the Edmonton Community Legal Centre tie for the most organic number-one positions, 38 each
- Healey Law takes 27 number-ones, Brown Law Group 24, Preszler 23
- The regulator and government hold 38 more between them on informational queries
- None of these organic leaders appears in the map-pack grid’s top standings
| Domain | #1 positions | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| mccuaig.com · McCuaig Desrochers LLP | 38 | full-service firm |
| eclc.ca · Edmonton Community Legal Centre | 38 | non-profit clinic |
| healeylaw.ca · Healey Law | 27 | family law |
| brownlawgroup.ca · Brown Law Group | 24 | family law |
| preszlerlawalberta.com · Preszler Law | 23 | personal injury |
| lawsociety.ab.ca · Law Society of Alberta | 22 | regulator |
| bestlawyers.com · directory | 20 | directory |
| alberta.ca · Government of Alberta | 16 | government |
Desktop and mobile agreed on the number-one result for 214 of 269 keywords; directories and government pages hold 9.7% of all organic top-10 rows.
The Map-Pack Grid, Cell by Cell
The grid below is the real exhibit from the measurement: 25 fixed cells, each a mobile local-finder search run from that exact point, scored by Share of Local Voice. This is the instrument view of the market, the same screen a client sees in their own report.
| Firm | Cells in top 3 | Median rank | Rating · reviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chadi & Ibrahim LLP | 24 / 25 | #1 | 4.8 · 542 |
| James H. Brown & Associates | 22 / 25 | #2 | 4.9 · 1,625 |
| Ogilvie LLP | 11 / 25 | #4 | 4.3 · 119 |
| Assiff Law Office | 7 / 25 | #7 | 5.0 · 2,108 |
| Andrew Law Office | 3 / 25 | #9 | 4.4 · 46 |
What Clients Punish: 1,712 Reviews Read
The grid tells you who wins; the reviews tell you why the door is open. We read every review the 25 rostered firms received in the last 18 months and tagged the 80 negative ones line by line. The roster’s negative reviews concentrate on billing surprises and unreturned calls: a $3,000–$4,000 quote that closed at $14,000, a $500 rush fee for the firm’s own delay, land titles still unregistered three years after closing.
Share of the 80 negative reviews mentioning each failure
Themes overlap (one review can hit several), tagged by pattern match and read-through. Not one of the 25 firms publishes prices, a response-time standard, or a file-status cadence. Those are the three promises these complaints beg for.
The full 25-firm report, with the weakness matrix and every quoted review, is published as a free sample: read the Edmonton law-firms GroundTruth sample.
The SEO Game Plan to Become #1
Everything above collapses into five sequenced steps. This is how a firm would take this market, in the order the measurement dictates, and every step is verified by re-measuring the same grid and keyword set.
Date-stamp your starting position
Run the same 25-cell grid and the same 270-query pull for your own firm before touching anything. Every later claim of movement compares against this dated baseline.
25 grid cells · 270 queries · one dateAttack the review-trust gap on the map layer
The map-pack grid is won on review mass and proximity: the cell owner holds 4.8 stars across 542 reviews, the runner-up 4.9 across 1,625. A firm below a few hundred reviews does not enter that fight without a review system - collection, response, and the billing-transparency promises the market's complaints beg for.
Grid owner: 4.8★ × 542 · runner-up: 4.9★ × 1,625Build the practice-area pages the long tail rewards
Unlike dentistry, over half of this market's demand sits outside the top 20 queries. Ten practice-area clusters, each with its own page, plus the published-fee pages nobody in the top 25 owns: flat-fee divorce, fixed-fee closings, severance review. The complaint data hands you the angle - print the price, promise the callback.
55% of 141,400/mo sits in the long tailTake the authority column the directories are renting
Directories and government pages hold 9.7% of organic top-10 rows and 58 number-one positions. Every one is a listing or citation a firm can hold, plus a link source the organic leaders already use. This is sequenced link and citation work, not a numbered package.
522 of 5,383 top-10 rows are directoriesRe-measure monthly and hold both layers
Only 32.1% of map-pack placements also rank organic top 10, and no firm holds both columns. The firm that does owns screen real estate no competitor structurally matches. The same grid, the same query set, re-run monthly, proves it and holds it.
32.1% overlap today · both layers = open groundWhat We Learned
Get This Measurement for Your Market
This study is the product. The same grid, the same query pull, the same review analysis, run for your business and your category, with the game plan sequenced from what the measurement finds.
A market with two different winners cannot be diagnosed from a rank tracker alone. Reading both layers before recommending anything is the method our Edmonton SEO services are built on.