James Wood Law is opening a larger office in Scottsdale, expanding its Arizona practice, and preparing to wind down Albuquerque. Ninety-six percent of the firm’s digital footprint is built for the market it is leaving.
The market it is entering has seven pages, no Google Business Profile, no local telephone number, no Arizona case results, no Arizona reviews, and no presence whatsoever in the city where the new office is going.
When Albuquerque closes, the 166 pages, the 49 reviews and the only Google profile this firm owns go with it. There is nothing standing behind them.
We contend eight things. Each is stated below, each is proven with evidence the firm can verify itself without granting us access to anything, and each is answered with a specific remedy.
| Market | Pages | Population | Pages per 100k |
|---|---|---|---|
| Albuquerque | 47 | ~916,000 | 5.1 |
| Santa Fe | 25 | ~155,000 | 16.1 |
| Rio Rancho | 24 | ~110,000 | 21.8 |
| Phoenix metro | 5 | ~5,120,000 | 0.10 |
| Tucson | 1 | ~1,060,000 | 0.09 |
| Scottsdale | 0 | ~242,000 | 0.00 |
Page counts: jameswoodlaw.com/site-map. Population: Maricopa Association of Governments 2025 estimates; U.S. Census metro estimates. Births: KFF analysis of CDC NCHS natality data, 2024 final.
Open jameswoodlaw.com/site-map and count. Every figure above is on that one page.
Google requires a business location to be staffed during its stated hours with permanent signage on the premises. Virtual offices, mail-forwarding addresses and unstaffed flexible-workspace suites do not qualify, and listings built at them are routinely reported by competitors and removed.
If Suite 400E is a flexible-workspace unit, then the firm has not simply failed to claim a Phoenix profile. It has not had an address that could carry one. Every dollar of Arizona marketing has been spent while the single highest-converting local channel was structurally unavailable. That is worth knowing before anyone assigns blame for it.
We have not confirmed the tenancy of Suite 400E itself, only how Suite 400 is marketed. One phone call to the building settles it, and it should be made before anything else on this page.
| Firm | Rating | Google reviews |
|---|---|---|
| Phillips Law Group | 4.9 | 2,543 |
| Shapiro Law Team | 5.0 | 889 |
| Lloyd Baker Injury Attorneys | 4.9 | 856 |
| Torgenson Law | 5.0 | 728 |
| Sargon Law Group | 4.9 | 430 |
| SL Chapman (Scottsdale) | 4.9 | 198 |
| Snyder & Wenner, Phoenix | 4.8 | 107 |
| Gage Mathers Law Group | 4.7 | 95 |
| Knapp & Roberts, Scottsdale | 4.9 | 55 |
| Hastings Law Firm | 4.8 | 51 |
| James Wood Law, Albuquerque | 4.4 | 49 |
| James Wood Law, Arizona | none | no profile found |
Google Places, retrieved September 9, 2026. Ratings and counts change; the firm should verify current figures directly.
A word of fairness on the 4.4. A firm that declines most of the cases it is called about collects angry reviews from people it turned away. That is the cost of being selective and it is not a mark against the practice. But Google does not know that. It reads 4.4 against a field of 4.8s and ranks accordingly.
On a phone, search “medical malpractice lawyer Phoenix.” Look at the three map results. Then search the firm by name and see which office comes up.
The building opens and the phone does not ring, because nothing on the internet knows the firm is there.
A leased, staffed Scottsdale office with signage is the first address in Arizona that qualifies the firm for a Google Business Profile, a local number, and the citation record that everything else depends on. The Scottsdale move is not only an expansion. It is the event that finally makes Arizona local search possible. The only question is whether the digital presence is standing when the doors open, or built a year later while the lease runs.
Search “medical malpractice attorney Scottsdale” and look for the firm anywhere on page one.
On the homepage, hover “Hospital Negligence” and read the URL in the status bar. Then open the Phoenix page and search it for the word “Arizona.”
In June we cited a third-party estimate of $62,900 per month. Sara asked, fairly, whether that was a tool reading or a recommendation. Third-party spend estimates are directional, they miss badly in both directions, and no one outside the account can validate them. We are not building a case on a number we cannot verify and you should not accept one.
The structural argument does not need it. If Arizona is receiving a small share of budget, the expansion is being funded but not fought. If Arizona is receiving a large share, those clicks are landing on a five-page section with no profile, no local number and no Arizona proof, against competitors carrying thousands of reviews. Both roads lead to the same room.
This one you cannot check from outside, and neither can we. It requires the geographic and query-level breakdown inside the ad account, which is exactly what the two-week validation below produces, at no cost.
Search the firm’s name plus “verdict” and see what ranks. Then search the firm’s name alone and read the addresses and phone numbers in the directory listings below the fold.
Counts I through VI rest on things we observed directly. This one rests on how these systems are known to assemble answers, applied to signals we did confirm are missing. We have not yet run the Arizona-versus-New Mexico AI visibility measurement. It is in the audit, and if it comes back showing the firm is being surfaced in Arizona anyway, we will say so.
Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude the same question: “Who are the best medical malpractice attorneys in Scottsdale, Arizona?” Note who appears. Then ask the same question about Albuquerque.
Every count above describes something broken. This one describes something wasted, which is worse, because it has been accruing value the entire time nobody has been collecting it.
A stranger in Scottsdale researching whether their mother’s death was preventable has no way to learn any of what follows. It is not on the internet in any form they will encounter.
Credentials from the firm’s own biography pages, Super Lawyers, the National Trial Lawyers and Martindale-Hubbell. Digital figures observed September 9, 2026.
Thirty jury trials is the rarest thing on that left-hand column, and the only thing on it that an insurance carrier prices differently. It appears nowhere on the right.
Search “how many cases has my lawyer actually tried” and see what the internet offers a family trying to answer that. Then search this firm’s name and count how many of the credentials above appear anywhere a non-lawyer would find them.
Any advisor who hands you findings without this section is selling rather than advising. Firm Performance will look for these, so we are putting them up front.
James, I know you have someone with legal marketing experience joining you in October. This document was written so you can hand it straight to them. Nothing in it was written to go around anyone.
We have built this firm on one discipline for more than two decades and we know it at depth. Everything in this brief is what that experience produces: eight findings, each sourced, each reproducible, each written to be checked by someone with every reason to check it.
Strategy and evidence are different inputs. We can supply the evidence and the execution at a level of depth that is genuinely hard to find. An experienced legal marketing professional will add industry judgment on top of it. Those two things together are considerably stronger than either alone, and we are comfortable saying so because in June this firm was asked to make an Arizona decision with almost no Arizona facts in evidence. Nobody advises well under that condition.
The firm has been asked to make Arizona decisions on hearsay. Our only real proposal is that it stop.
Whatever James decides about Ezzey, that part should happen regardless.
The New Mexico program is performing. We believe that, and we are not asking to touch it. Arizona is a separate market that has never been built, and it should be built as its own unit, on its own budget, measured on its own signed cases. Two weeks to validate it. Then we move.
Recommended Arizona media budget of $15,000 per month, paid by the firm directly to Google on the firm’s own account. We never hold or mark up media. The first two weeks are validation and carry no fee. The engagement begins only if you accept the findings, and execution starts immediately after.
That is the entire ask. Read-only, no contract, no fee, no account changes, nothing moved away from anyone. Fourteen days later you will hold a written geographic breakdown of what Arizona is costing and what it is producing, which, as far as we can tell, nobody currently has.
If the numbers say Arizona is fine, we will put that in writing and you will have gotten a free audit out of us. We are comfortable with that outcome.
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