EDUCATION HUB — WEBSITE PAGE TYPES

About & Team Pages: E-E-A-T Authority Builders for Law Firms

How to structure your firm’s About Us, attorney bio, and staff pages to satisfy Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines, earn AI platform citations, and convert prospective clients in 2026.

This is a missed opportunity. Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines—the 181-page document that trains the roughly 16,000 human evaluators who assess search result quality—explicitly directs raters to begin their E-E-A-T assessment by examining what a website says about itself. For law firms, whose content falls squarely within Google’s YMYL classification, this assessment carries elevated weight. And in 2026, the stakes extend beyond Google: AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google Gemini evaluate similar trust signals when deciding which attorneys to cite or recommend in response to user queries. As documented in research on building expert and authority signals for law firms, these signals directly influence whether your firm appears in AI-generated recommendations.

This guide—part of the Complete Guide to Website Page Types for SEO, GEO, AEO & AI Visibility—provides a practical framework for structuring About pages, attorney bios, and staff profiles that satisfy both human evaluators and machine intelligence. Every recommendation is grounded in Google’s published guidelines and current schema markup standards for law firms.

What Are About & Team Pages?

About and team pages are the collection of website pages that tell visitors and search systems who operates a law firm, what qualifies those people to practice law, and why they should be trusted with sensitive legal matters. For a typical law firm, this category includes three distinct page types, each serving a different purpose.

The About Us Page

This is the firm-level identity page. It communicates founding history, mission, core values, areas of focus, and the firm’s collective credentials. Google’s quality raters use this page as a starting point for understanding whether a website is operated by a legitimate organization with a genuine purpose.

Attorney Bio Pages

Individual attorney profiles are the primary E-E-A-T signal for legal content. Each bio page should function as a standalone credential document—verifiable by both human evaluators and AI crawlers. These pages establish that specific, named individuals with documented qualifications are responsible for the legal services the firm provides. When properly structured with Person schema markup, attorney bios become machine-readable authority signals that AI platforms can parse and reference.

Staff Profile Pages

Pages for paralegals, legal assistants, intake specialists, case managers, and administrative staff. While less common on law firm websites, staff profiles demonstrate organizational depth and operational transparency. They signal to evaluators that the firm has the infrastructure to deliver on its service promises—a trust indicator that most competing firms fail to provide.

Why E-E-A-T Matters for Law Firm Websites

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google introduced the framework—originally as E-A-T—in its Search Quality Rater Guidelines, then added the second “E” for Experience in December 2022 to emphasize the importance of first-hand knowledge. For law firms, every element of this framework intersects directly with the information conveyed on About and team pages.

The YMYL Classification

Google classifies legal content as “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) material—content that can directly impact a person’s health, financial stability, safety, or overall well-being (Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines, updated September 11, 2025). This classification means legal websites face more rigorous quality assessment than sites in most other industries. As documented in the complete data-driven guide to law firm marketing in 2026, this elevated standard applies to every page that discusses legal services, processes, or outcomes.

The September 2025 update to the Quality Rater Guidelines further expanded YMYL definitions to include civic information and content affecting public trust—a category that intersects with many areas of legal practice, from election law to government relations to immigration.

Trust Is the Foundation

Google’s guidelines state explicitly that “Trust is the most important member of the E-E-A-T family because untrustworthy pages have low E-E-A-T no matter how Experienced, Expert, or Authoritative they may seem.” For law firms, trust begins with transparency: who are the attorneys, what are their credentials, how can they be contacted, and what is the firm’s track record? About and team pages are where these questions get answered.

The AI Platform Dimension

E-E-A-T signals now serve a dual purpose. Beyond influencing Google rankings, they affect whether your firm gets cited by AI platforms. When someone asks ChatGPT “Who is a good personal injury lawyer in Los Angeles?” or queries Perplexity for attorney recommendations, AI systems evaluate structured data signals including Person schema credentials, bar admissions, education, and the consistency of entity information across authoritative sources. Research published in the Proceedings of the 30th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD ’24), Barcelona, Spain, August 25–29, 2024, demonstrated that AI platforms weight authoritative, well-structured content significantly higher in citation decisions (Aggarwal et al., 2024, DOI: 10.1145/3637528.3671900). Optimizing your team pages for these signals is a core component of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

What Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines Say About About Pages

Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines provide direct instruction on how evaluators should use About pages during assessment. Understanding these instructions reveals exactly what your About and team pages need to accomplish.

Quality raters are trained to look for specific elements when evaluating E-E-A-T. According to the guidelines, raters assess “what you say about yourself and your site on your About page” as one of the primary inputs for determining trustworthiness. The guidelines direct raters to examine whether a site’s main content indicates trustworthiness, and to verify claims through external sources where possible. As explored in becoming an authority in legal marketing, this verification step means your About page content must be consistent with information found on State Bar directories, LinkedIn profiles, court records, and professional association listings.

For YMYL content, the guidelines set higher standards. Raters specifically look for formal credentials (bar admissions, education), professional reputation signals (peer recognition, publications), and operational transparency (physical address, contact methods). Pages that display any sign of untrustworthiness receive low E-E-A-T ratings regardless of how polished or professional they may appear.

The Reputation Research Step

Raters don’t just evaluate what’s on your site. They’re instructed to conduct independent reputation research—searching for reviews, news articles, professional directory listings, and third-party mentions. This means your team page information must be consistent across every platform where your attorneys appear: State Bar websites, Avvo, Martindale-Hubbell, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, and any other professional directories. Inconsistencies between your website and external sources raise trust concerns during evaluation.

Anatomy of a High-Performing Law Firm About Page

A law firm About page that satisfies both quality raters and AI systems includes specific structural elements. Each element maps to a component of the E-E-A-T framework and serves a distinct trust function.

Firm History and Founding Story

Document when the firm was established, by whom, and the circumstances of its founding. This provides experience signals—evidence that the firm has operated in the legal industry for a verifiable period. Specificity matters: “Founded in 2002 by Scott Wiseman” is verifiable, while “We have decades of experience” is not. Include founding dates, key milestones, and any significant practice evolution. This narrative context is what separates a credible firm from an anonymous website that could have been created last week.

Mission and Values Statement

Articulate what the firm stands for in concrete terms. Avoid generic language like “dedicated to excellence” or “committed to justice.” Instead, describe specific operational values: how the firm approaches client communication, what ethical standards guide case selection, and how results are measured. AI platforms parsing your About page for entity understanding benefit from clear, factual statements about organizational purpose.

Practice Area Overview

List the firm’s practice areas with brief descriptions that link to dedicated practice area marketing pages. This creates topical context for search engines and AI systems, establishing what the firm is qualified to discuss. Each practice area mention should connect to the attorney credentials that support it—linking expertise claims to verifiable professional qualifications.

Community Involvement and Professional Associations

Document bar association memberships, committee leadership roles, pro bono commitments, continuing legal education (CLE) teaching, and community partnerships. These are authoritativeness signals—evidence that the firm participates in the professional community beyond client work. Quality raters conducting reputation research will look for external corroboration of these claims, so only include verifiable involvement.

Contact Information and Physical Location

Include complete NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information prominently on the About page. A verifiable physical address is a primary trust signal for both Google and AI platforms. If the firm has multiple offices, list each location with consistent formatting that matches the information on your location pages and Google Business Profile listings. This NAP consistency is foundational for local SEO and critical for AI systems verifying entity legitimacy.

Attorney Bio Pages That Build Trust

Attorney bio pages are the most important E-E-A-T pages on any law firm website. They connect specific content on the site to named, credentialed individuals—the fundamental requirement for YMYL trust evaluation. Each attorney bio should function as a comprehensive credential document.

Essential Elements for Every Attorney Bio

A complete attorney bio page includes the following elements, each serving a specific E-E-A-T function:

Professional headshot. A high-quality, professional photograph establishes that a real person is behind the credentials. Stock photos or AI-generated images undermine trust. Use consistent photography style across all attorney profiles for visual cohesion.

Bar admissions and license numbers. List every state where the attorney is admitted to practice, along with admission dates and, where appropriate, bar numbers. These are verifiable credentials that quality raters can cross-reference against State Bar directories—and that AI platforms use when evaluating whether to cite an attorney as qualified in a specific jurisdiction.

Education. Include law school, graduation year, undergraduate institution, and any honors or distinctions (law review, moot court, dean’s list). This establishes the expertise component of E-E-A-T through verified academic qualifications.

Practice area focus with experience indicators. Rather than simply listing practice areas, connect them to experience: “Has represented over 200 clients in personal injury claims involving commercial trucking accidents since 2010.” Quantifiable experience claims carry more weight than generic practice area labels.

Professional associations and leadership roles. Include bar association section memberships, committee chairs, board positions, and any leadership roles in legal organizations. These authoritativeness signals demonstrate recognition by professional peers.

Publications and speaking engagements. List published articles, legal commentary, CLE presentations, conference appearances, and any media contributions. These demonstrate expertise and willingness to share knowledge publicly—a strong indicator that an attorney is a credible authority in their field. As noted in source-of-sources strategies for earning authority, these external validation points are particularly valuable for AI citation eligibility.

Community involvement. Pro bono work, nonprofit board service, mentorship programs, and local community contributions build trust signals that extend beyond professional qualifications. They demonstrate the “Experience” dimension of E-E-A-T by showing real-world engagement.

External profile links. Link to the attorney’s profiles on LinkedIn, Avvo, Martindale-Hubbell, State Bar directory, and any other relevant platforms. These sameAs links serve double duty: they help quality raters verify credentials and provide AI platforms with entity corroboration across authoritative sources.

Content Authorship Connection

Every article, blog post, and educational resource on the firm’s website should link back to the author’s bio page. This creates a bidirectional trust signal: the content demonstrates the attorney’s expertise, while the bio page provides the credentials that make that expertise verifiable. Implementing this pattern is essential for establishing your firm as a known entity for AI search.

Staff Pages: The Overlooked E-E-A-T Signal

Most law firm websites only profile attorneys. This leaves a significant trust gap. Prospective clients interact with paralegals, intake specialists, case managers, and administrative staff throughout their engagement. Documenting these team members on the website provides organizational depth signals that competitors lack.

Why Staff Pages Matter

From an E-E-A-T perspective, staff pages demonstrate that a law firm has the operational infrastructure to deliver on its promises. A personal injury firm that shows its intake specialists, case managers, and medical records coordinators signals organizational capacity. A family law practice that introduces its client liaison and billing coordinator demonstrates transparency about who clients will actually work with. This level of operational visibility directly supports trust—the most heavily weighted component of the E-E-A-T framework.

What to Include on Staff Pages

Staff profiles don’t need the same level of detail as attorney bios, but they should include a professional photo, job title, a brief description of the person’s role in the client service process, relevant certifications or training (paralegal certificates, notary commissions, bilingual capabilities), and years of experience. For firms with remote legal staffing models, including remote team members on the staff page demonstrates the firm’s commitment to transparency regardless of work arrangement.

Organizational Chart Transparency

Consider including a visual or textual representation of how the firm is organized. Showing the relationship between attorneys, paralegals, and support staff helps prospective clients understand the team structure and know who to expect during their engagement. This kind of structural transparency is increasingly valued by AI platforms parsing websites for entity relationships—it provides the contextual data that enables more accurate firm descriptions in AI-generated responses.

Schema Markup for About & Team Pages

Structured data transforms About and team page content from human-readable text into machine-parseable entity information. For law firms, proper schema implementation on these pages is the technical bridge between E-E-A-T content and AI platform recognition. InterCore’s attorney schema generator automates much of this process, but understanding the underlying structure is essential for quality control.

Person Schema for Attorneys

Every attorney bio page should include Person schema markup that communicates credentials in a format AI platforms can process directly. The critical fields include name, job title, employer (linked to the firm’s Organization entity), educational credentials (using alumniOf), professional certifications, bar admissions, and sameAs links to external profiles. According to schema code standards for law firms, every Person entity must include a url property for clean validation.

Here is a simplified example of attorney Person schema (refer to the full schema implementation guide for production-ready code):

{
  "@type": "Person",
  "@id": "https://yourfirm.com/#attorney-jane-doe",
  "name": "Jane Doe",
  "jobTitle": "Senior Partner",
  "url": "https://yourfirm.com/team/jane-doe/",
  "image": "https://yourfirm.com/images/jane-doe.jpg",
  "alumniOf": {
    "@type": "CollegeOrUniversity",
    "name": "Harvard Law School"
  },
  "hasCredential": {
    "@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
    "credentialCategory": "Bar Admission",
    "recognizedBy": {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "name": "State Bar of California"
    }
  },
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.linkedin.com/in/janedoe/",
    "https://www.avvo.com/attorneys/janedoe.html"
  ]
}

Organization Schema for the About Page

The firm’s About page should include Organization (or LocalBusiness) schema with complete details: legal name, founding date, address, contact information, logo, social media profiles, and sameAs links to authoritative directory listings. For firms appearing in Google Business Profile listings, the schema data must match GBP information exactly to maintain entity consistency.

Author Attribution in Article Schema

When attorneys publish content on the firm’s website, the Article schema should reference the attorney’s Person entity via @id. This creates a machine-readable connection between content and credentialed author—exactly the type of structured relationship that AI platforms evaluate when deciding whether to cite a source. This bidirectional linking between content and author entities is a fundamental requirement of Generative Engine Optimization for law firms.

Optimizing About & Team Pages for AI Platform Visibility

AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot evaluate law firm credentials differently than traditional search engines. Where Google uses quality raters and algorithmic signals, AI systems analyze structured data, entity relationships, and cross-platform consistency to determine which firms to cite in response to user queries. About and team pages are central to this evaluation because they contain the raw credential data AI systems need.

Entity Consistency Across Platforms

AI platforms build entity profiles by aggregating information from multiple sources. If your attorney’s bio page says they graduated from “UCLA School of Law” but their LinkedIn profile says “University of California, Los Angeles School of Law” and the State Bar directory lists “UCLA Law,” this inconsistency may reduce confidence in entity resolution. Standardize naming conventions for educational institutions, professional organizations, and bar admissions across all platforms. As documented in AI platform citation patterns for law firms, citation accuracy improves when entity data is consistent across sources.

Structured Data as AI Input

Person schema, Organization schema, and sameAs links provide AI platforms with machine-readable entity data that supplements their training data. According to Pew Research Center (survey of 5,123 U.S. adults, February 24–March 2, 2025; published June 25, 2025), 34% of U.S. adults have now used ChatGPT—roughly double the share from 2023—with adoption reaching 58% among adults under 30 and 52% among those with postgraduate degrees. This growing user base means that AI platform optimization is no longer optional for law firms targeting educated, digitally engaged prospective clients.

Content That AI Can Cite

Write attorney bios and About page content in a factual, neutral tone that AI platforms can extract and reference directly. Avoid promotional language like “the best lawyer in town” or “aggressive representation guaranteed.” Instead, use statements that are verifiable: “Admitted to the California State Bar in 2008. Has represented clients in over 300 personal injury matters. Named to Super Lawyers list from 2019 to 2025.” These are the kinds of factual claims that AI platforms can verify and cite when recommending attorneys.

Measurement Framework

Measuring the effectiveness of About and team page optimization requires tracking both traditional search metrics and AI visibility indicators.

Frequently Asked Questions

Build About & Team Pages That Earn Trust and AI Citations

InterCore Technologies has specialized in AI-powered legal marketing since 2002. Our team builds E-E-A-T-optimized About pages, attorney bio pages, and staff profiles with proper schema markup—structured to satisfy Google’s quality raters and earn citations from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

Schedule a Free Consultation →

📞 (213) 282-3001
✉️ sales@intercore.net
📍 13428 Maxella Ave, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292

References

1. Google. (2025, September 11). Search Quality Rater Guidelines. Retrieved from https://guidelines.raterhub.com/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf
2. Google Search Central. (2023, November). Search Quality Raters Guidelines Update. Retrieved from https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/11/search-quality-rater-guidelines-update
3. Google Search Central. (n.d.). Introduction to Structured Data Markup in Google Search. Retrieved from https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data
4. Aggarwal, P., Murahari, V., Rajpurohit, T., Kalyan, A., Narasimhan, K., & Deshpande, A. (2024). GEO: Generative Engine Optimization. In Proceedings of the 30th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD ’24), Barcelona, Spain, August 25–29, 2024, pp. 5–16. DOI: 10.1145/3637528.3671900
5. Sidoti, O. (2025, June 25). 34% of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT, about double the share in 2023. Pew Research Center. Survey of 5,123 U.S. adults, February 24–March 2, 2025. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/25/34-of-us-adults-have-used-chatgpt-about-double-the-share-in-2023/
6. Schema.org. (n.d.). Person Schema Type. Retrieved from https://schema.org/Person
7. Schema.org. (n.d.). Organization Schema Type. Retrieved from https://schema.org/Organization

Conclusion

About and team pages are not vanity content. They are the E-E-A-T infrastructure that determines whether Google’s quality raters—and increasingly, AI platforms—trust your law firm’s website enough to recommend it. For YMYL legal content, the stakes are particularly high: incomplete credentials, inconsistent entity data, or missing transparency signals can disqualify your firm from the visibility channels that matter most in 2026.

The practical implementation isn’t complex, but it requires attention to detail. Complete attorney bios with verifiable credentials and proper Person schema. A firm About page with Organization schema, founding history, and complete contact information. Staff profiles that demonstrate operational depth. And consistency across every platform where your firm appears—from your website to State Bar directories to LinkedIn to Google Business Profile. These are the pages that establish your expert and authority signals across both traditional and AI search.

For the complete picture of how About and team pages fit within your firm’s website architecture, return to the Complete Guide to Website Page Types for SEO, GEO, AEO & AI Visibility. For hands-on help implementing these strategies with proper schema markup and AI optimization, explore InterCore’s GEO services or contact our team directly.