The short answer
In August 2026, 41,059 of the 58,645 active attorneys in Los Angeles County listed a practice area on their State Bar profile. Litigation, labor and employment, and personal injury were listed most. Set against Google searches, personal injury has the fewest lawyers per search: 31 private-practice attorneys for every 100 monthly searches.
A crowded practice area and a crowded search result aren't the same thing. Some case types have thousands of Los Angeles attorneys and almost no one searching for them. Others have the reverse. We counted both, so a firm can see which kind of market it is in.
The attorney counts come from the State Bar of California's public profiles, read August 10 to 12, 2026. The search counts come from DataForSEO, a search data service, pulled in October 2026. We publish totals only, and no attorney is named.
Which practice areas do Los Angeles attorneys list most?
Litigation, at 10,181 attorneys. Labor and employment (6,198) and personal injury (5,767) come next. Each attorney picks their own areas, and many pick several, so the rows add up to more than the total. Our employment law firms page covers what that crowding means for an employment firm's marketing.
| Practice area on the profile | Los Angeles attorneys | Share of those listing an area |
|---|---|---|
| Litigation | 10,181 | 24.8% |
| Labor and employment | 6,198 | 15.1% |
| Personal injury | 5,767 | 14.0% |
| Contracts | 4,976 | 12.1% |
| Business law | 4,742 | 11.5% |
| Real estate | 4,289 | 10.4% |
| Corporate law | 4,108 | 10.0% |
| Entertainment and sports | 4,027 | 9.8% |
| Criminal law | 3,656 | 8.9% |
| Intellectual property | 3,225 | 7.9% |
| Trusts and estates | 2,828 | 6.9% |
| Family law | 2,353 | 5.7% |
| Workers' compensation | 2,222 | 5.4% |
| Immigration | 1,852 | 4.5% |
The other 17,586 Los Angeles attorneys list no practice area at all. Of those who do, 24,267 list exactly one and 5,716 list five or more. For the same count across every California county, see how many lawyers are in California.
Which practice areas have the most searches per lawyer?
Personal injury. There are 31 private-practice injury attorneys in Los Angeles County for every 100 monthly searches for "personal injury lawyer los angeles". Criminal law is next, at 48. For intellectual property the figure is 1,799.
- Personal injury
- 31
- Criminal law
- 48
- Immigration
- 61
- Family law
- 95
- Taxation
- 106
- Landlord and tenant
- 106
- Labor and employment
- 133
- Business law
- 241
- Wills and probate
- 249
- Real estate
- 317
- Trusts and estates
- 385
- Entertainment and sports
- 650
- Workers' compensation
- 667
- Intellectual property
- 1,799
| Practice area and search phrase | Attorneys | Searches a month | Est. cost per click |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal injury personal injury lawyer los angeles | 5,675 | 18,100 | $72.88 |
| Criminal law criminal defense lawyer los angeles | 2,105 | 4,400 | $56.49 |
| Immigration immigration lawyer los angeles | 1,768 | 2,900 | $14.88 |
| Family law family lawyer los angeles | 2,280 | 2,400 | $26.47 |
| Taxation tax attorney los angeles | 1,056 | 1,000 | $55.59 |
| Landlord and tenant landlord tenant lawyer los angeles | 1,055 | 1,000 | $10.79 |
| Labor and employment employment lawyer los angeles | 5,872 | 4,400 | $58.70 |
| Business law business lawyer los angeles | 4,586 | 1,900 | $19.26 |
| Wills and probate probate lawyer los angeles | 1,796 | 720 | $22.65 |
| Real estate real estate lawyer los angeles | 4,119 | 1,300 | $23.53 |
| Trusts and estates estate planning attorney los angeles | 2,771 | 720 | $8.45 |
| Entertainment and sports entertainment lawyer los angeles | 3,837 | 590 | $8.38 |
| Workers' compensation workers comp lawyer los angeles | 2,133 | 320 | $77.20 |
| Intellectual property intellectual property lawyer los angeles | 3,058 | 170 | $19.18 |
One phrase per area undercounts demand. "Car accident lawyer los angeles" adds about 8,100 searches a month on top of the injury phrase. "Divorce lawyer los angeles" adds about 2,900 for family law. Spanish searches aren't in the table either.
What does the gap mean for a firm's marketing?
Where there are few lawyers per search, clients are searching and firms compete on spend. Where there are many lawyers per search, clients mostly don't search that way, so referrals and reputation carry more of the work.
- Personal injury has the most searches per lawyer and one of the highest click prices: the crowding is in ad budgets, not head count. Our personal injury SEO guide covers the car accident pages.
- Criminal law looks crowded on paper: 3,656 attorneys list it, but 1,547 work for a public employer, such as a prosecutor's or public defender's office. A few work for companies outside law. That leaves 2,105 in private practice for 4,400 monthly searches. Our criminal law SEO guide covers charge pages.
- Immigration has 61 attorneys per 100 searches and the lowest click price of the case types people search for most. Spanish searches aren't counted here, and our SEO for immigration lawyers guide covers them.
- Workers' compensation has 667 attorneys per 100 searches, yet the clicks that exist cost about $77 each. Click prices are estimates, so read $77 as a sign of competition, not a count of bidders.
- Intellectual property, entertainment and business law have thousands of attorneys and few local searches. Few people search for them by city, so we would test a small Google Ads budget before a large one.
Every lead you pay for has to be answered fast, which our speed to lead guide covers.
Which practice areas list only one area?
Workers' compensation and criminal law. Seven in ten Los Angeles workers' compensation attorneys list nothing else, against fewer than one in ten business law attorneys.
| Practice area | Listing it | Only this area | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workers' compensation | 2,222 | 1,551 | 70% |
| Criminal law | 3,656 | 2,248 | 61% |
| Immigration | 1,852 | 1,007 | 54% |
| Family law | 2,353 | 1,246 | 53% |
| Entertainment and sports | 4,027 | 1,987 | 49% |
| Labor and employment | 6,198 | 2,472 | 40% |
| Personal injury | 5,767 | 1,831 | 32% |
| Business law | 4,742 | 443 | 9% |
A single-area profile is a hint that the attorney's whole practice is that one case type. For marketing, it means your rivals in workers' compensation or criminal defense mostly do nothing else.
How many of each work alone is in our count of Los Angeles law firm sizes. How we work with injury firms is on our personal injury firms page, and the wider market is on Los Angeles law firm marketing.
How is this different from a Los Angeles lawyer directory?
A directory helps a client pick one lawyer. This page counts how many lawyers list each practice area, so a firm can see how crowded an area is against how often people search for it. Most Google results for this topic on October 29, 2026 were firm lists and directories, such as Justia, Martindale and Cornell's lawyer directory, which don't give that comparison.
To read the tables well, keep three things in mind:
- Counts overlap. An attorney who lists five areas appears in five rows, so never add the rows to get a market size.
- The ratio matters more than either number. Attorneys per 100 searches is a rough sign of how many lawyers share each pool of demand.
- Searches are only one source of clients. Referrals, courts and repeat clients bring cases that no search phrase shows.
A directory also says nothing about supply across the state. The State Bar's justice gap study finds 16 California counties are attorney deserts,[3] so a count of Los Angeles lawyers says little about clients elsewhere. In Los Angeles the question is less whether a lawyer exists and more which firm a client finds first.
How we counted
We used public State Bar attorney profiles, read in August 2026, and kept the active ones. We placed each California address in a county by its ZIP code, using the Census Bureau's 2020 ZIP code area file.[1]
That gave 58,645 active attorneys in Los Angeles County. The State Bar's own county table showed 58,866 on October 20, 2026, so our count is within 0.4% of it.[2]
Practice areas are what each attorney chose to show on the profile. We counted an attorney once for each area listed. Private practice means the employer name on the profile isn't a public body, court or company outside law.
To check the counts, we ran the personal injury figure a second way, straight from the raw profile text. It came out within 2% of the table.
A few limits apply:
- Listing an area isn't proof of practicing it, and not listing one isn't proof of the reverse. Practice areas are optional and self-reported.
- Search figures are DataForSEO estimates of Google searches across the US for each phrase. Phrases that name Los Angeles come mostly from people in the area, but not only.
- One phrase per practice area is a simple measure of demand. Your own case types will have other phrasings worth checking.
We didn't contact any attorney or firm for this count. Everything here comes from the State Bar's public site and from search data.
Check your own practice area in 15 minutes
- Write down the two or three case types you want more of.
- Find each one in the second table and note its attorneys per 100 searches.
- Search the phrase on your phone in Los Angeles, and count the ads and map results before the first ordinary result.
- Open your own State Bar profile and check that its practice areas match the cases you actually want.
For the next step, our law firm marketing plan guide turns those numbers into a budget and a list of channels.
Sources
- US Census Bureau, "2020 ZCTA to County Relationship File". census.gov/geographies/reference-files/time-series/geo/relationship-files.2020.html. Checked October 20, 2026.
- The State Bar of California, "Attorney Demographics by County and Status". Live table, no date shown. apps.calbar.ca.gov/members/demographics_counties.aspx. Read October 20, 2026.
- The State Bar of California, Justice Gap Study, "Attorney Deserts". No page date shown. publications.calbar.ca.gov/justice-gap-study/attorney-deserts. Checked October 29, 2026.