Law firm marketing · New York
This year New York changed comparative fault for car cases and replaced its lawyer advertising rules. Outlier runs search, SEO, video and intake for New York firms, built borough by borough on what each search actually costs.
The New York market board
Pick a practice area. Each tile is one search in one place: how many people type it each month, what a click costs, and how hard it is to reach page one without paying for it.
"NYC" is a fortress at difficulty 71. Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are each a third of the way down the scale.
Construction and premises cases carry the highest clicks in the city. "Scaffold accident lawyer" is a US-wide count.
Family law clicks are cheap in New York, but the city terms are contested.
Immigration is the biggest non-injury search in the city.
Semrush US keyword database, pulled October 10, 2026. Difficulty is Semrush’s 0 to 100 score for reaching page one organically:Open door 30 or lower,Contested 31 to 55,Fortress over 55.
Where the money is
Premises and construction cases top the ladder, and the Bronx and Brooklyn pay more per click than “nyc” while being far easier to rank in.
Every search on the ladder names New York, the city or a borough. “Scaffold accident lawyer” (difficulty 6) has no bid data, so it isn’t on the ladder. Semrush US database, October 2026.
What changed in 2026
Two changes this year reach straight into car accident pages, intake scripts and ad copy. Three older rules still shape how New York injury firms market.
N.Y. CPLR 1411(b)Cases filed on or after May 26, 2026
In motor vehicle injury cases under the no-fault law, a plaintiff more at fault than the defendants now recovers nothing. Every other injury case keeps pure comparative fault. Car accident pages written before May need a rewrite.
N.Y. Ins. Law § 5102(d)Same 2026 law
The same law removed the 90/180-day category of “serious injury” for car cases. Intake should screen for the categories that remain, and pages shouldn’t promise the old threshold.
22 NYCRR Part 1200, Rules 7.1 and 7.3In force June 1, 2026
New York now follows the ABA’s principle-based rules: no false or misleading communications. The separate 30-day blackout on personal injury and wrongful death solicitation is gone, and live person-to-person solicitation is still banned.
N.Y. Labor Law § 240(1)The Scaffold Law
Owners and contractors are liable when a worker falls, or is struck by a falling load, because proper protection wasn’t provided. “Construction accident lawyer new york” draws 1,900 searches at $160.86 a click; “scaffold accident lawyer” sits at a difficulty of 6.
N.Y. CPLR 214(5)Three-year limit
Most personal injury claims must be brought within three years; medical malpractice gets two and a half (CPLR 214-a). Claims against the city and other public bodies carry far shorter notice deadlines.
Summaries for marketing planning, not legal advice. Sources: the New York CPLR, Insurance Law and Labor Law, Chapter 58 of the Laws of 2026, and the Appellate Division’s amendments to the Rules of Professional Conduct, checked October 2026.
How we’d run New York
The head term is a fortress; the boroughs are not. This is where we would start in each market, read straight off the board.
The fortress
“Personal injury lawyer nyc” draws 4,400 searches a month at a difficulty of 71. Buy it while you build around it: construction, premises and car accident pages carry the highest clicks and are far easier to rank.
The biggest open borough
“Personal injury lawyer brooklyn” draws 1,900 searches a month at $84.52 a click and a difficulty of 33: the largest borough market a firm can realistically rank in.
Expensive and open
The priciest injury click among the boroughs, $112.75 for “personal injury lawyer bronx”, sits at a difficulty of only 25. Every visit a firm earns organically here is worth more than in any other borough on the board.
Steady volume
“Personal injury lawyer queens” draws 1,600 searches at $64.80 a click and a difficulty of 37: cheaper clicks than the Bronx and a realistic ranking target.
Suburban and car-driven
“Personal injury lawyer long island” draws 1,900 searches at $52.38, the cheapest injury click on the board, at a difficulty of 50.
What we run for New York firms
Separate campaigns for construction, premises, auto and family law in each market, run by a senior media buyer and optimized to signed cases.
PPC for law firms →Pages for the searches where the click is expensive and ranking is realistic, with FAQ schema so AI search can cite you.
Law firm SEO →Car accident pages, intake scripts and ad copy reviewed against the new fault rule and the new advertising rules.
Law firm web design →Films of the lawyer who will handle the case, cut for the site, the map pack, YouTube and short-form social.
Video production →Cost per signed case, the case-type library and the intake playbook for injury firms.
Personal injury marketing →On-camera segments and coverage that make the firm the obvious choice before the accident ever happens.
Public relations →Proof from injury firms
Mirador Law needed cheaper cases, Simon Law Group needed a national brand, and Altair Law needed to be known at all.
Read the case studies →Keep reading
Questions New York firms ask us
Twenty minutes, no deck. We read your site, ads and intake the way a client would and tell you the three things we would change first.
Not ready to talk? Grade your website free, in about a minute.