Yes, selectively. Linking to other law firms — when those links are honest references that help your reader — is one of the more counterintuitive SEO moves I tell firms to make. Most law firms link to nothing but their own pages. They treat outbound links like leaks. Google treats sites that act as hubs of useful references as more authoritative than sites that act as dead ends. The win is structural: a site that links out to real, substantive resources gets evaluated as a more useful site, full stop. The constraint is ethical: ABA Rule 7.2 has things to say about how lawyers can structure referral relationships, and you can’t paper over fee-splitting by calling it a “preferred partner” link.
I get this question a lot from firms that are nervous about sending traffic away. The fear isn’t crazy — sending a prospective client to another firm’s website feels like watching the case walk out the door. But that’s not what selective outbound linking actually looks like. It looks like linking to a tax attorney when your PI page talks about the tax implications of a structured settlement. It looks like linking to a bankruptcy firm when your family law page touches on debt resolution. You’re not handing your cases to competitors. You’re being useful in places where being useful costs you nothing.
Why outbound links help SEO
Google’s evaluation models have evolved to favor sites that demonstrate they’re part of a real topical ecosystem. A page that cites bar association sources, state court rulings, professional organization standards, and — yes — other respected firms reads as a more trustworthy reference than a page that pretends nothing else exists on the internet. The reasoning is intuitive: real experts cite other real experts. A law firm site that refuses to ever acknowledge another firm or resource looks like a brochure, not an authority. Brochures don’t rank.
This shows up in E-E-A-T evaluation in particular — the Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust signals that Google’s human raters use to evaluate legal content. One of the signals raters specifically look for is whether the page demonstrates awareness of authoritative external sources. Outbound links to bar associations, court systems, peer-reviewed research, government resources, and respected practitioners are part of that signal. More on E-E-A-T signals for law firm pages here.
A law firm site that links to nothing outside itself reads like a firm that’s never heard of any other lawyers. Google can tell. The other lawyers can tell. The reader can tell.
When to link to another firm specifically
The straightforward cases first. If you don’t handle a practice area but your prospective clients sometimes need it, link to a firm you’d refer to. A PI firm that doesn’t handle workers’ comp can link to a workers’ comp firm. An estate planning firm that doesn’t handle elder law can link to an elder law firm. A family law firm that doesn’t take criminal cases can link to a criminal defense firm. Those links are useful for the reader, low-risk for you (you weren’t going to take the case anyway), and signal to Google that your site is a real hub.
Co-counsel relationships are another good case. If you regularly partner with a specific firm on complex matters — say you do plaintiff PI but partner with a firm that does mass tort when a case crosses that line — link to them on the relevant page. That link is descriptive (“we partner with [firm] on mass tort matters”), it’s honest, and it explains your firm’s actual capability set to a prospective client who might otherwise assume you can’t help them.
Don’t link to direct competitors in the same practice area in your same market. That’s not a useful link for the reader, and it doesn’t help your SEO — it just sends traffic to a firm trying to take your cases. The selective part of “yes, selectively” matters.
The ABA Rule 7.2 issue
Most states have adopted some version of ABA Model Rule 7.2, which restricts what lawyers can give or receive in exchange for referrals. The relevant part for outbound linking: you can refer cases (and accept referrals back) under a reciprocal arrangement, but you can’t pay for the referral, share fees with the referring firm (with limited exceptions), or create the appearance of an exclusive referral relationship that’s actually a paid placement.
Practically, this means a few things for outbound links from your site. You can link to firms you have an informal referral relationship with — “we refer cases in [practice area] to [firm name] when…” — and that’s clean. You can’t sell a “preferred partner” link on your site to a firm willing to pay for the placement. You can’t structure your outbound links as a quid-pro-quo where you link to a firm in exchange for the firm sending you cases on fee-split terms.
The gray area: if a firm you genuinely refer to also refers cases back to you, your reciprocal linking is fine — but disclose the relationship somewhere on the page if a reasonable client might assume it’s a clean reference rather than a referral arrangement. State bar interpretations vary; the conservative move is to err on the side of disclosure. Most state bar advertising regulations would rather see honest disclosure than no disclosure at all.
The rel attribute question
The technical detail. Outbound links to other firms should typically be left as default — no rel="nofollow", no rel="sponsored" — because they’re genuine editorial references. The link is your firm saying “this is a useful resource.” That’s the kind of link Google wants to see as a default link.
The exceptions: if there’s any financial relationship between the firms — a referral fee, a paid placement, a sponsored mention — the link should be rel="sponsored" per Google’s link attribution guidelines. If the link is to a resource you don’t fully endorse (e.g., a competitor’s page being cited for context), rel="nofollow" is fine. If it’s a reciprocal “we refer to them, they refer to us” relationship with no fee involved, default link is appropriate. When in doubt, err toward more disclosure — the SEO downside of a nofollow on an outbound link is tiny; the regulatory downside of an undisclosed paid link is real.
The honest caveat
Outbound linking is one of those “necessary but not sufficient” SEO moves. Adding a few thoughtful outbound links to your existing pages won’t move rankings on its own. It works in combination with all the other foundational signals — substantive practice pages, real reviews, clean GBP, fast site, decent backlink profile. Don’t go on a linking spree expecting it to do the heavy lifting. Use it as part of the broader pattern of “be a useful site,” and it pays back over time.
Related reading: E-E-A-T signals for law firm pages, local link building for law firms, do law firms need a blog, and how to rank practice pages.