Manifesto · Updated 2026-05-21
Our mission
We're building the most comprehensive, honestly-sourced database of personal injury lawyers in the United States — so that people who've been seriously hurt can make an informed choice instead of clicking on whichever firm bought the top Google ad.
Why this exists
The US personal injury legal market is worth roughly $40 billion a year. Firms spend over $750 million annually on Google Ads competing for accident victims at their most vulnerable moment. The ecosystem around this market — referral networks, lead-gen farms, "Top 10 lawyers" SEO blogs — is built almost entirely to extract leads, not to help people choose.
If you search "best truck accident lawyer Houston" right now, you'll find five pages that all rank firms in the same order: whichever firm is paying the most to that publisher. There is no independent, transparent, verifiable comparison of US personal injury lawyers anywhere on the open web.
That's the gap we exist to fill.
What we're building
Our long-term goal is a comprehensive database of every meaningful US personal injury firm, with each entry built from the same set of publicly verifiable signals — refreshed quarterly, attributed back to its source, and presented in a single comparable format.
We aggregate, we don't fabricate. Every data point on this site either comes from a public source we link to, or is clearly labeled as an editorial judgment with reasoning.
The three layers of every firm profile
We separate data by provenance. This is the core idea — and as far as we know, nobody else in this niche does it honestly.
Hard facts from public sources
License status, bar admission year, disciplinary history, third-party ratings (Avvo / Google / BBB), founding year, attorneys on staff, languages, fee structure. Each linked to the source, with a "last checked" date.
The firm's own marketing
"$1 billion recovered", "trial-tested", "50 years combined experience". We show what the firm says on its own website and link to the page where it says it. We can't independently verify settlement totals — most settlements are confidential. We're transparent about that.
Our judgment, with reasoning
One opinion, transparent: overall score, "best for", "avoid if", transparency / communication / methodology sub-scores. We explain how we got there, link to our methodology, and invite challenges.
The public sources we aggregate
Below is the full list of sources we use (and the ones we're working to integrate). When you see a "Verified" badge on a firm profile, it means that field has been pulled from one of these sources, attributed back, and checked within the past 90 days.
| Source | What we pull | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 50 State Bar registries e.g. Texas Bar, California Bar | License status, bar admission year, disciplinary history — the only definitive source for "is this person actually a lawyer" | Q3 2026 |
| Avvo | Profile data, 1-10 rating, peer endorsements, client reviews, practice area focus | Q3 2026 |
| Google Business Profile | Star rating, review count, verified phone, hours, address | Q3 2026 |
| BBB (Better Business Bureau) | Accreditation status, letter grade rating, complaint history | Q4 2026 |
| Justia | Cross-verification of bar memberships, practice areas, biography | Q4 2026 |
| Super Lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell | Peer-nominated rankings (Super Lawyers, AV Preeminent) | Q1 2027 |
| Google News + verdict reporting | Publicly reported settlements and verdicts (where the dollar amount is in the news, not just claimed by the firm) | Q1 2027 |
| Firm websites | Self-reported claims (always labeled "firm-claimed"), founded year, attorney roster, fee disclosures | Shipped — top 49 firms |
| Our editorial review | Overall score, "best for", "avoid if", sub-scores by our published methodology | Shipped — top 49 firms |
Each source has its own license terms and rate limits — we comply with all of them, cache appropriately, and link back where attribution is required. The result on our site is a synthesized, comparable view nobody else assembles.
What we have today (honestly)
We're not pretending to be where we're going. Here's the current state, with no inflation:
- 10 US cities covered — Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, San Antonio.
- 49 firms in our database — top 5 in each city. Editorial review + manual research for top 3; skeleton entries (name, city, rank) for the rest.
- Quiz + Comparator live — find-my-lawyer quiz and side-by-side comparator both run on the same database with the same data model.
- One niche: truck accidents. Personal injury is our broader niche; truck accidents is where we're starting.
Coverage is small. Quality is high. That's deliberate. We'd rather ship 49 firms with checked sources than 49,000 firms scraped carelessly. The infrastructure that makes 49 → 49,000 possible is what we're building next.
Where we're going
Public roadmap, public commitment:
- Q2 2026 (now) Manually populate research data for all 49 firms (ranks 4-5 still on skeleton). Submit sitemap to Search Console, attract first organic traffic.
- Q3 2026 Move from file-based JSON to Cloudflare D1 database. Build ETL pipeline. Integrate first three automated sources: Avvo, Google Business Profile, State Bar (starting with Texas as proof-of-concept).
- Q4 2026 Expand to 50 cities. Add BBB and Justia integrations. Add second niche: motorcycle accidents. Coverage target: 1,000+ firms.
- Q1 2027 Super Lawyers / Martindale / verdict news aggregation. Coverage target: 5,000+ firms across 100+ cities. Add car accident niche.
- Q2 2027 National coverage. Every meaningful US personal injury firm has a profile. Add slip-and-fall and workers' comp niches.
What you can hold us accountable to
This is a public commitment, not a marketing brochure:
- Every data point has a source URL and a "last checked" date. If you don't see one, that's a bug. Tell us.
- Editorial scores include reasoning, not just numbers. If you disagree with our take, you can see exactly why we said what we said — and challenge it.
- Compensation never influences editorial rankings. The editors who score firms do not see per-firm referral revenue. Sponsored placements (if any) are visually distinct and clearly labeled. Full disclosure here.
- We publish corrections. Material factual errors get a note at the bottom of the affected page within 48 hours of notification.
- Our methodology is public. Read how we rank firms. If you spot an inconsistency, we want to hear about it.
The honest version of our pitch
We're a small, independent publication. We don't have a $750 million Google Ads budget. We don't have an army of paid SEO writers cranking out "Top 10" listicles. What we have is an actually-good idea: that accident victims deserve real, sourced, comparable data about lawyers, not marketing fog.
If we build that and it's clearly better than what exists, the rest — traffic, reputation, sustainable revenue — follows. We believe that's how this works.
If you're an accident victim looking for a lawyer, try the match quiz or comparator. If you spot anything wrong, email us. If you're a journalist, lawyer, or researcher and want to talk about how we work, also email us — we publish openly.
— Mark Sullivan, Editor
editorial@accidentlawyerreview.com