According to the filing, the Plaintiff reported inappropriate conduct from a male volleyball coach with the The Latin School of Chicago with female volleyball players to her supervisor, in an effort to protect young female students. The lawsuit alleges that at no point did the leadership at The Latin School of Chicago express any concerns for the female volleyball players. However, The Latin School of Chicago and its administration ignored these reports, allowing the conduct to continue.

The Complaint also further alleges that Plaintiff was discriminated against by coaches in The Latin School of Chicago’s athletics department by being marginalized, ignored and dismissed.  The Complaint alleges that the head coach of the volleyball team ensured that he only worked with male coaches at  The Latin School of Chicago by ignoring any improper behavior by male coaches, conspiring with another male coach to manufacture a complaint about the Plaintiff, all to facilitate the wrongful termination of the Plaintiff.

“This complaint describes a continued pattern of failed leadership and institutional misconduct at The Latin School of Chicago. The safety and well-being of students must always come first” said  Justin DeLuca, counsel for the Plaintiff and attorney at Ellis Legal P.C “However, The Latin School of Chicago’s reputation is more important than the safety and protection of students and the only way to  do that is to silence those who speak out about the pattern of abuse, discrimination, and toxic environment at The Latin School of Chicago.”

The defendants have not yet filed a response to the lawsuit. All allegations described in the complaint are claims made by the plaintiff and have not been adjudicated by the Court.

Bloomberg Law’s Leading Law Firms recognition highlights firms that demonstrate exceptional performance across key measures of success, including financial strength, talent, growth, and innovation. The distinction reflects a firm’s ability to deliver outstanding client service while adapting to the evolving legal and business landscape.

“We are honored for GreatLaw to be recognized by Bloomberg Law as one of its Leading Law Firms for 2026,” said Barry McFadden, Co-Managing Partner of McFadden Trachtenberg PLLC. “We are incredibly grateful to our clients, colleagues, and team members who have supported us throughout our 10 year journey as a firm.”

Founded in 2016, McFadden Trachtenberg has built a reputation for delivering sophisticated legal services with the responsiveness and efficiency clients expect from a modern law firm. The firm’s attorneys advise businesses, governmental entities, contractors, entrepreneurs, investors, financial institutions, politicians, and individuals on a wide range of matters, including corporate transactions, commercial litigation, government and public law, commercial real estate, construction, golf course industry, lending and financial services, energy, aviation and employment law.

The firm’s inclusion on Bloomberg Law’s Leading Law Firms 2026 list follows a period of continued growth and expansion, reflecting GreatLaw’s ongoing investment in talent, technology, and client service initiatives.

“It’s incredibly fulfilling to be acknowledged for the hard work our team puts into every matter, for every client,” said Brian Trachtenberg, Co-Managing Partner of McFadden Trachtenberg PLLC. “This is what happens when a great group of people likes what they do, likes doing it together, and likes who we do it for every day.”

As McFadden Trachtenberg celebrates its tenth year in practice, the firm remains committed to delivering practical and innovative legal solutions to clients for many years to come.

The audit found that “Testimonials” remains the most common social proof label across law firm websites, outranking “Reviews” by 32%. Across the dataset, 35% of firms publish a Testimonials nav page compared to 27% publishing a Reviews page. Google Trends data for 2025 showed the consumer search terms “lawyer reviews” and “law firm reviews” generating steady search interest throughout the year, while “lawyer testimonials” and “law firm testimonials” registered zero measurable interest for every week of the year.

The disconnect extends beyond navigation labels to URL structure. The full report on testimonials vs reviews found that 2,350 law firm domains route their social proof page through a “/testimonials/” URL path, while only 1,516 use a “/reviews/” path. Even among firms that updated their nav label to “Reviews” or “Client Reviews,” many left the underlying URL unchanged, leaving the indexed page address tied to the term consumers do not search for.

In a finding that captures the transition in motion, 563 firms in the audit publish both a “Testimonials” and a “Reviews” item in their main navigation as separate menu entries. More than half of those firms, 304 in total, point both menu items to the exact same URL.

Personal injury showed the widest gap between consumer language and on-site language, with 54.8% of personal injury firms publishing a Testimonials nav page compared to 27.6% publishing a Reviews page. Business law was the only practice area in the audit where Reviews appeared more frequently than Testimonials.

The full study, including methodology, practice area breakdowns, and a four-step migration sequence for firms changing from Testimonials to Reviews, is available on Custom Legal Marketing’s website.

“As one of the fastest growing ADR firms in the country, we are continually evolving, and that means enhancing not only the services we offer clients, but how we serve our clients,” says Parag Shah, CEO of Miles. “Our new website and Adira, our new case management platform, will make it easier for clients to find the right neutral for their cases, check neutral availability, schedule mediations, access case information, and explore other services — all in one streamlined, easy-to-use place.”

The upgrades include the following features:

• Improved search functionality
  Find the right neutral for your case more quickly, with better filtering and more intuitive results.
• Real-time neutral availability
  View and compare availability instantly — so scheduling takes less time.
• Expanded access to Miles’ services
  Easily explore and book services like ADR OnDemand, arbitration, special master appointments, and private trials — all in one place.
• Simplified document handling
  Upload, access, and manage case materials more efficiently to our encrypted, secure platform.
• Practice development tools

Access to thought leadership, continuing legal education courses, and other resources to help you thrive in your legal practice.

“The idea behind these enhancements is simple: to provide an exceptional experience to the clients we serve, leaving them free to focus on their cases, and their own clients,” adds Shah. “And we look forward to continuing to respond to our clients’ needs as Miles expands.”

For at least a decade, the prevailing advice in search engine optimization (SEO) has been that longer content reliably outranks shorter content. While studies conducted on the internet-at-large have confirmed that, there wasn’t any reliable research particularly focused on law firms and how word count correlates with their rankings. On CLM’s blog, the company said most data “comes from broader studies of B2C affiliate content, recipe blogs, and various small-business websites. A study of recipe blog rankings is not a study of how Google ranks your law firm.”

The new study finds that while word count does have a statistically detectable relationship with where a law firm page appears on Google, the effect is significantly weaker than commonly believed and varies dramatically by practice area and geographic market.

“Word count has been treated like a settled question in law firm SEO,” said Jason Bland, Co-Founder of Custom Legal Marketing. “The advice for years has been to write longer pages, and there has been almost no industry-specific data behind that recommendation. We decided to run the numbers ourselves. What we found should change how a lot of law firms and their marketing companies approach their content strategy.”

Among the most notable findings, the median word count for top-ranking law firm pages varies by a factor of four across practice areas. Employment law pages ranking at the top of Google have a median length of 428 words. Personal injury pages in the same top position have a median length of 1,691 words. Family law, estate planning, and business law all fall at distinctly different points along the same range, indicating that a one-size-fits-all content target does not reflect how Google actually ranks legal pages.

Geography also plays a substantial role. Across the 24 metro areas studied, the median word count for ranking law firm pages varied by a factor of two. Texas markets clustered well below the overall median. Northern and coastal markets clustered higher. The study found that two firms in different parts of the country could be competing on the same keyword and ranking with pages of very different lengths.

The report also examined individual search results pages directly. When the longest law firm page in a given search result was compared against shorter competitors, it held the top position less than 30 percent of the time, only marginally better than random chance would predict.

“Content quality matters. Search intent matching matters,” Bland added. “What the study shows is that the same word count target applied to every practice area and every market doesn’t reflect what’s actually happening on Google and it doesn’t reflect improved performance.”

The complete research report, Does Word Count Matter for Google Rankings?, includes practice-area-by-practice-area breakdowns, metro-level analysis for each of the 24 cities surveyed, within-SERP competitor comparisons, and the full methodology.

Custom Legal Marketing’s AI marketing platform, Sequoia, is always running experiments and most of the discoveries become proprietary entries into the system’s knowledge base. However, this year the company has released some of their platform’s findings to the public.

According to the complaint, Benson Fischer — who states he has never met or spoken to Dennis Yu, became the target of an online campaign that commenced in April 2025. The complaint asserts the conflict stems from Fischer’s work as a business and franchise consultant for 12 franchisees of Nautical Bowls, who were in a legal dispute with the parent franchising company.

Extortion and “Digital Warfare”

Benson Fischer alleges that Yu, who established a professional relationship with Nautical Bowls in 2024, used LinkedIn and various internet platforms in an effort to harass Fischer. The goal, according to the filing, was to pressure Benson Fischer into abandoning his consulting role and halt his assistance to attorney Richard Schimel in the franchisees’ pursuit of a settlement.

Fischer alleges that Yu’s conduct escalated into what it describes as a “digital warfare” strategy, including:

• Cybersquatting: The complaint alleges Yu purchased domain names including Benson-Fischer.com and BensonFisher.com without consent to use as a weapon.
• SEO Manipulation: The complaint states Yu used these domains and the name “ZivZo” in numerous URLs to elevate disparaging content in Google search results.
• Targeting Legal Counsel: The lawsuit alleges Yu also purchased the domain RichardSchimel.com to post articles criticizing Fischer’s attorney’s website and used unauthorized photographs of Schimel in his postings.

Nautical Bowls Connection

The litigation against Yu is proceeding alongside a related action. In a separate case filed in the same court, Benson Fischer has also sued Nautical Bowls Franchising Company, LLC (Case No. 8:25-cv-02286), also seeking $6 million in damages.

The second complaint alleges that Nautical Bowls Franchising Company conspired with Dennis Yu after Nautical Bowls’ attack on Fischer failed. The complaint alleges that Nautical Bowls efforts were designed to obstruct Fischer’s consulting services and interfere with the franchisees’ pursuit of a resolution.

Dennis Yu’s Refusal to Remove Content

After five days of mediation in September 2025, Benson Fischer and Richard Schimel settled all of the franchisees’ claims. According to the complaint, Yu has not removed the posts referencing Fischer and ZivZo, and Fischer’s requests for removal have been unsuccessful.

According to court filings, Yu’s year-long online activity includes more than 20 articles that the complaint characterizes as containing a “mix of fabrications and unsubstantiated statements about Fischer, his marketing firm ZivZo”, and his legal counsel, Richard Schimel.

Benson Fischer further alleges that Yu has conditioned removal of the posts on a monetary payment and the dismissal of Fischer’s federal lawsuit. Court records show that Yu did not file any counterclaims to justify such financial demand.

Over the past year, Benson Fischer has filed four Peace Order petitions (restraining orders) and obtained temporary court orders directing Yu to cease his online activity referencing Fischer and ZivZo and to remove all related posts. According to the complaint, to secure a permanent order Yu must be served by a process server or a local Sheriff’s Department, and service has been attempted nearly 30 times without success.

Dennis Yu’s Pattern of Behavior

The Maryland complaint alleges what it characterizes as a “pattern of behavior” by Yu involving other individuals and legal professionals. Fischer’s complaint references a separate case in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida (Case No. 9:25-cv-80391), which the Maryland complaint describes as similar in nature.

In the Florida case, Yu engaged in similar conduct involving Lisa T. Miller and her legal counsel, including former State Attorney Dave Aronberg and attorney L.A. Perkins. The Maryland complaint alleges that, as in the Fischer matter, the Florida case involved allegations that Yu purchased domains containing the attorneys’ names.

CASE INFORMATION

U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland
ZivZo, LLC & Benson J. Fischer v. Dennis Yu
Case No. 8:25-CV-02075-PX

Built for litigators, Lexertia helps attorneys move from an assignment to a structured litigation document draft with ease. Attorneys provide the facts, related documents, and strategic direction; Lexertia generates the litigation work product aligned with the attorney’s inputs and case materials.

“The Avatar Associate changes the experience from prompting software to assigning work,” said Ehab M. Samuel, Co-Founder and CEO of Lexertia. “That distinction matters because it personalizes the drafting experience around the workflow attorneys already know: assigning work, shaping strategy, and refining work product.

The platform is designed to create detailed drafts of motions, oppositions, replies, and supporting litigation documents, including notices, declarations, and exhibits. Lexertia also allows users to compare multiple draft paths side-by-side, refine selected sections, and build a stronger final work product.

Key features include:

• Avatar Associate workflow for guided litigation drafting
• Structured drafts built around motions, briefs, and arguments
• Multiple draft options for comparison and refinement
• Record-grounded drafting based on user-provided facts, filings, and exhibits
• Built-in checks to help identify inconsistencies, unsupported assertions, and citation gaps

To learn more, visit lexertia.ai.

The Award of Distinction recognizes projects that exceed industry standards in quality and achievement.

“We’ve spent two decades helping law firms tell their stories online, and our website is where we tell ours,” said Jason Bland, Co-Founder and CEO of Custom Legal Marketing.

A website built as a working resource for legal marketers

The Custom Legal Marketing website is structured less like a typical agency brochure and more like a working library for law firm marketers. Visitors can move fluidly between deep service explanations, technical guides, case studies, and primary research.

The redesign includes:

• A growing Knowledge section featuring CLM’s original research, including its widely cited PageSpeed and law firm SEO analysis and its study on whether law firms are using AI content to rank at the top of Google search. Studies are presented with methodology, sample sizes, statistical findings, and visualizations, not just conclusions.
• A dedicated Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) hub covering ChatGPT SEO, Google AI Overview optimization for lawyers, and Perplexity SEO, alongside link building strategy and lawyer keyword research.
• A Schema for Lawyers library with practical, code-level guides covering Article, Person, Event, Video, Local Business, and Breadcrumbs schema markup.
• Downloadable keyword reports for nearly every practice area, drawn from CLM’s research data.
• A dedicated Sequoia section introducing CLM’s proprietary AI-powered marketing intelligence platform, built entirely in-house and now deployed across the agency’s client base.

A portfolio that extends far beyond website design

While custom.legal showcases CLM’s design and development capability, the agency’s service portfolio reaches considerably further. Under the “What We Do” section of the site, CLM offers law firm marketing strategy, branding, content marketing, email marketing, PPC management, press and public relations, social media marketing, video production, and AI legal marketing, in addition to website design and development.

CLM works across multiple practice areas, including personal injury, employment law, family law, criminal defense, elder law and estate planning, immigration, intellectual property, litigation, business law, bankruptcy, tax law, and social security disability. The agency’s research-first orientation, primary data studies, schema and technical SEO depth, and the Sequoia platform together reflect a portfolio that has grown well past traditional agency boundaries.

The integration arrives two days after OpenAI opened its beta self-serve Ads Manager to U.S. advertisers on May 5, 2026. With this release, CLM Sequoia clients can monitor ChatGPT Ads impressions, clicks, click-through rate, spend, cost per conversion, and conversions alongside the organic AI citation data the platform already collects.

OpenAI’s expansion changes the math for legal marketers. The previous pilot required a minimum spend of $50,000 and an introduction through a holding-company agency. The ad manager launch removes the spend floor, adds cost-per-click bidding, and supports conversion tracking through a pixel and the OpenAI Conversions API.

The ChatGPT Ads won’t replace the need for ChatGPT optimization for lawyers, as the ad platform operates seperately from organic ChatGPT citations and recommendations.

“Law firms have been asking whether ChatGPT Ads would matter for case acquisition. The answer is yes, and the time to test is now,” said Jason Bland, Co-Founder and CEO of Custom Legal Marketing. “Because of what we’ve built with our Sequoia platform, we were able to push our first campaigns live less than 24 hours after OpenAI opened the platform.”

The Sequoia integration pulls live data from OpenAI and renders it next to the organic AI visibility metrics CLM AI Monitor already tracks. A firm running ChatGPT Ads can view paid impressions on the same screen as the organic citations the firm earns through SEO and content. The dashboard supports day-over-day trend analysis, campaign-level breakdowns, and conversion attribution. It also feeds the core Sequoia knowledge bank to fast track conversion optimizations on the platform.

CLM Sequoia is the proprietary platform developed by Custom Legal Marketing over the past five years.

The Ads module is included for existing Custom Legal Marketing law firms. Additional ad platform integrations are planned as more AI platforms launch advertising capabilities.

In a recent documentary chronicling his journey, Sumekh reflected,

“The relationship I have with my team is actually what I’m most proud of. With each team member or staff that we hired, I was always focused on getting to know the staff, personal growth, and even when we brought in friends or family. All these people greatly contributed to the person I am today.”

Sumekh will retain a minority stake and continue to support Legal Soft in a strategic advisory capacity while shifting his primary focus to a new venture aimed at addressing long-standing operational and infrastructure gaps within the legal industry.

Since its founding, Legal Soft has supported more than 1,000 law firms and deployed over 3,000 highly trained remote legal professionals across 14+ practice areas, including Personal Injury, Immigration, Lemon Law, Employment, Bankruptcy, and more.

Nathan Sumekh, co-founder, added:

“Building Legal Soft was a global project that allowed me to connect with incredible professionals and support law firms and medical practices worldwide. I made lifelong friends, and I’m proud of what we built. Now I’m excited to build AI that automates the compliance and operational tasks we used to staff for so talented people can focus on work that requires human judgment.”

Watch the documentary on Nathan Sumekh’s journey building Legal Soft and his exit here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGU0kjgkJkk

A New Chapter: Building Disbo

After more than a decade building operational infrastructure for law firms, Sumekh identified a process that has gone largely unchanged since the 1950s: how personal injury firms pay medical providers. Most personal injury firms still mail checks to doctors for liens and medical records, a process that requires cutting checks, obtaining signatures, tracking delivery, and manual reconciliation. Disbo eliminates the check entirely: firms search a verified provider directory, initiate payment from their trust account, and funds move bank-to-bank with automated client notifications and three-way reconciliation built in.

The platform makes compliance, speed, and cost reduction structural advantages instead of operational trade-offs, replacing a manual process with a financial infrastructure built for modern legal practice.

Background: Legal Soft

Under Sumekh’s leadership, Legal Soft built the infrastructure to deploy 3,000+ specialized legal professionals across eight global offices. The company developed training systems specific to legal workflows and workforce redundancy models that guaranteed coverage during high-volume periods or unexpected turnover, enabling firms to reduce staffing costs by up to 70% while maintaining quality standards that resulted in sub-5% monthly client churn.

Sumekh’s business partner, Alex Tofer, Attorney and Founder, Tofer & Associates, added:

“Out of all the partners that I’ve had over the last 25 years in my legal practice, I would say that Nathan is by far in the top three of reliable, honest, trustworthy, and extremely competent partners I’ve ever had. He’s done more in the last, I would say, 5 years than most professionals I know have done in the last 20.”

Sumekh retains a minority stake in Legal Soft and will continue in a strategic advisory capacity. Legal Soft’s leadership, operations, and client relationships remain fully intact.

About Disbo

Disbo is a bank-to-bank disbursement infrastructure connecting personal injury law firms directly to medical providers. The platform replaces manual check-based payments with instant, compliant, fully reconciled transfers, eliminating one of the last major administrative bottlenecks in legal practice management.

https://www.disbo.com

About Nathan Sumekh

Nathan Sumekh is a legal industry operator and entrepreneur who spent over a decade building the infrastructure that powers how modern law firms run. At Legal Soft, he architected the systems behind a 3,000-person global workforce, spanning eight offices, and developed training programs, quality assurance models, and compliance-first staffing operations that served over 1,000 law firms nationwide across 14+ practice areas.

His work sits at the intersection of legal operations, workforce infrastructure, and regulatory compliance, giving him a ground-level understanding of where law firms lose time, money, and staff to broken processes. Disbo, his next venture launching later this year, applies that operational lens to one of the most persistent bottlenecks in personal injury practice: getting money from a trust account to a medical provider without a paper check.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-sumekh

Earlier this year, Custom Legal Marketing announced that the 21-year-old company had been secretly building an AI law firm marketing platform for years. Within the platform is a research system that continuously runs experiments to train Sequoia’s knowledge base. While the majority of their findings are not shared publicly, the company has been releasing studies in recent months that challenge vanity metrics in the SEO industry.

Using its proprietary CLM Sequoia research platform, Custom Legal Marketing conducted what may be the largest empirical analysis in the legal space of Website Authority scores like Domain Authority and organic search rankings. The study captured thousands of search results across eight competitive practice areas and the 50 most populous U.S. cities, scoring each result for Moz Domain Authority and classifying sites by type: law firm, directory, or resource.

The findings were clear: among law firm websites competing against other law firms, Domain Authority showed no meaningful correlation with ranking position. Law firms with low DA scores routinely outranked firms with scores two, three, and even six times higher. The study found that the metric’s apparent predictive value was almost entirely an artifact of high-authority directories like Justia, SuperLawyers, and Yelp occupying top positions, not any relationship between DA and where individual law firms actually rank.

The study also tested DA’s predictive power through head-to-head matchups, comparing every pair of law firms competing within the same search results to determine how often the higher-DA firm actually ranked above the lower-DA firm. The results suggest that DA is barely more reliable than random chance at predicting which of two competing law firms will appear higher in Google’s results.

A companion analysis examined whether the industry’s two most widely used authority tools — Moz Domain Authority and Ahrefs Domain Rating even agree with each other when scoring the same websites. They did not. The two tools produced substantially different scores for the same legal domains, applied opposite scoring biases depending on the size of the website, and could not agree on which sites belonged in their respective top tiers. If the tools measuring “authority” cannot converge on what authority looks like, the study argues, neither score belongs on a law firm’s marketing dashboard.

The study does not suggest that Moz, Ahrefs, or similar platforms lack value. Both platforms offer extensive backlink analysis, competitive research, and link prospecting capabilities that remain useful for practitioners. While the two platforms may differ, Domain Authority and Domain Rating can help SEO teams assess the relative strength of a competitor’s or potential partner’s link portfolio. 

But focusing on a higher authority score will not improve your rankings. And a dropping authority score does not mean you’ll lose ground in your organic rankings. This means the scores are a helpful research insight but as a benchmark, they’re a vanity metric. 

The study includes practice-area-level breakdowns, quartile analysis, directory dominance data, and specific examples of low-DA law firms ranking in top positions for competitive keywords in major markets. It also offers strategic recommendations for law firms looking to evaluate their current SEO campaigns and the metrics their agencies report.

The full study, including methodology, interactive data visualizations, and a section addressing DA-focused agency pitches, is available at https://custom.legal/knowledge/website-authority-scores-and-search-rankings/.

This report is the latest in a series of proprietary research publications from the CLM Sequoia platform, which has previously examined page speed, AI-generated content, and URL structure as ranking factors in legal search. CLM Sequoia is Custom Legal Marketing’s AI-powered law firm marketing platform, purpose-built for legal marketing. It powers large-scale SERP analysis, AI visibility monitoring through its AI Monitor, competitive intelligence, and the original research program that drives both client strategy and CLM’s published industry studies.

As Vice Chair, she will assist in organizing the committee’s activities, contributing to educational programs and helping to coordinate input on legislative and regulatory initiatives affecting the agricultural sector.

The Agricultural Law Committee examines legal issues affecting rural and agricultural communities across Pennsylvania. The committee reviews questions and problems farmers and agricultural businesses face and tracks legislative and regulatory proposals. In her role on the committee, Straub is expected to continue contributing to discussions on how state and federal law affects farm families, agribusiness operations and the broader rural economy.

Straub is looking forward to the opportunity to continue contributing to those efforts as Vice-Chair. Straub’s law practice at Hazen Law Group centers on representing clients in the agricultural sector, particularly in succession and farm transfer planning. She advises farm families and agribusiness owners on long-term ownership and management transitions, with attention to preserving both the viability of the enterprise and the interests of family members who may or may not be directly involved in farming.

Slowik Estate Planning focuses on helping individuals and families organize their affairs in anticipation of life changes, incapacity, and the transfer of assets to the next generation. It will continue to serve both current and new clients from its new headquarters, offering legal guidance for estate planning, elder law, wills and trusts, asset protection, and probate and trust administration.

The move places the firm closer to a growing corridor of professional services and medical offices along the Glenridge Connector, an area that has seen an influx of families and retirees in recent years. The new location is intended to offer greater convenience to existing clients while accommodating the steady increase in inquiries about wills, trusts, and long-term care planning.

The Sandy Springs-based firm is led by attorney Jake Slowik, a Harvard Law School graduate with more than a decade of experience in estate planning and related matters. The firm’s approach is grounded in careful documentation and in communicating options in plain language, particularly for older adults and families navigating complex financial and medical decisions.

To learn more about the firm, visit https://slowikestateplanning.com/.

Estate planning attorney Jake Slowik said many Atlanta families assume that placing assets in a trust automatically shelters income from taxation or eliminates filing obligations, an assumption that can lead to penalties and interest when returns are missed.

“People are often surprised to learn that, in many cases, trust income is fully taxable and must be reported on a separate federal return,” Slowik said. “If trustees wait until the last minute to sort out whether their trust is a grantor or non-grantor trust, they risk filing late or filing incorrectly.”

For tax purposes, revocable living trusts are commonly treated as grantor trusts. In those cases, all income is reported on the grantor’s personal Form 1040, and the trust does not file its own federal income tax return while the grantor is alive and in control.

By contrast, non-grantor trusts are separate taxpayers. They generally must file Form 1041 if they have any taxable income or at least $600 in gross income for the year. The trust pays income tax on amounts it retains, while income distributed to beneficiaries is deducted by the trust and reported to beneficiaries on Schedule K‑1.

“The federal income tax brackets for trusts are compressed,” Slowik said. “In 2026, a non-grantor trust can reach the top 37 percent bracket after only about $16,000 of taxable income, compared with more than $640,000 for an individual. That gap makes it critical to know whether income is being taxed at the trust level or to beneficiaries.”

Georgia’s rules add another layer. Trusts with a Georgia connection generally face the state’s flat income tax rate on their taxable income in 2026, whether they earn $5,000 or $500,000. Trustees must account for both federal and state rules when determining whether and how to file.

The filing deadline for calendar-year trusts typically matches the April 15 individual deadline. Trusts that expect to owe at least $1,000 in federal tax after credits may also be required to make quarterly estimated payments, a requirement that some individual trustees overlook until they receive IRS notices.

Slowik noted that irrevocable trusts raise additional planning questions. Under IRS guidance issued in 2023, assets transferred as completed gifts to certain irrevocable trusts may not receive a step-up in basis at the grantor’s death if they are excluded from the taxable estate, potentially increasing capital gains taxes when those assets are sold.

“Trusts are powerful tools, but they do not operate outside the tax system,” Slowik said. “As April 15 approaches, trustees should confirm how their trusts are classified, whether income has been distributed properly, and whether all required Forms 1041 and K‑1 will be filed on time.”

Slowik added that reviewing the trust document, recent account statements and prior-year tax returns together can help trustees and families avoid last-minute confusion and reduce the risk of costly filing mistakes as the deadline nears.

Overholt joins Paul Mackowski, Keith Mundrick, W. Andrew Kirtley and R. Daniel Faust, who also joined SKO in March, collectively strengthening the firm’s business, litigation and regulatory capabilities in Indianapolis.

“Suzannah joining SKO continues the strategic evolution of our Indianapolis office,” said P. Douglas Barr, member and managing director of SKO. “Her experience leading highly regulated healthcare operations and advising organizations across multiple sectors directly reinforces our ability to deliver business‑focused guidance to clients managing complex operational demands.”

Overholt’s arrival further enhances SKO’s capabilities in key sectors such as healthcare, and her multidisciplinary background reinforces the firm’s focus on providing integrated legal and business guidance to organizations managing sophisticated regulatory requirements, operational challenges and strategic growth initiatives.

SKO’s strategic transformation reflects the firm’s focus on delivering quality legal and business insight through collaborative teams that support clients across state lines and industry sectors. SKO is trusted by businesses in Indiana, Kentucky and beyond to support organizational goals and solve challenges.

About Suzannah Wilson Overholt

Suzannah Wilson Overholt brings more than three decades of experience advising clients across the healthcare, nonprofit, public and private sectors, with a practice spanning regulatory compliance, licensing, employment, corporate governance and healthcare‑related operational matters. She has guided clients through complex commercial and corporate transactions, contract negotiations, nonprofit governance issues and zoning matters involving healthcare facilities. She previously served as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel for one of Indiana’s largest healthcare providers, where she oversaw compliance, regulatory oversight, merger integration, contracting and organizational operations supporting more than 50,000 patients.

Her background also includes significant public‑sector experience designing government reform initiatives, negotiating labor agreements and litigating employment discrimination and constitutional claims. She regularly advises clients on the False Claims Act (FCA), Anti‑Kickback Statute (AKS), Stark Law and other federal and state healthcare regulations, and represents clients in related litigation. Drawing on her combined experience in private practice, executive leadership and public service, Overholt delivers efficient, business‑aligned legal solutions grounded in practical operational insight.

Rafi Law Services will house the firm’s non-legal operations, including technology, marketing, and administration. Rafi Law Group will remain the legal practice, with all attorneys retaining full authority over client representation, including legal strategy and advising clients regarding litigation and settlement.

“This structure allows us to modernize how we operate without changing who we are,” said Brandon B. Rafi. “Our mission remains the same: deliver outstanding results for clients. What’s changing is our ability to scale that mission responsibly. This isn’t disruption for disruption’s sake. It’s modernization with clear guardrails that keep clients and ethics first.”

The MSO model has been widely used across professional services such as healthcare and accounting and is increasingly being adopted in the legal industry as firms seek capital to support growth and an improved client experience while ensuring attorney independence. Legal industry leaders note that rising operational complexity, technology costs, and client expectations are accelerating interest in the model, particularly among personal injury firms.

The strategic equity investor in Rafi Law Services, a leading investment manager with expertise in the legal services sector, is now a minority partner in Rafi Law Services, with Brandon B. Rafi maintaining majority ownership and control. Rafi will continue to solely own and control Rafi Law Group.

“Capital can support efficient delivery of legal services while ensuring independence of legal decision making,” said Andy Halaby, Chief Legal Officer of Rafi Law Services. “This structure ensures that lawyers retain sole authority over client representation, while giving us the operational strength to expand access to justice.”

Legal industry analysts note that personal injury firms are at the forefront of a broader shift toward consolidation in the legal sector, as firms seek scale, efficiency, and resilience in an evolving marketplace. Brandon B. Rafi believes transparency and governance are essential as the industry evolves and intends to play a visible leadership role in shaping best practices for ethical growth.

“As the legal industry evolves, firms have a choice about how they grow,” Rafi added. “It’s about building a sustainable structure that puts clients first, supports lawyers, and is prepared for the future of the legal profession.”

Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc., a leading specialist investment bank to the financial services and legal sectors, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Stifel Financial Corp. (NYSE: SF) advised Brandon B. Rafi of Rafi Law Group as it identified and negotiated with its investment partner.

“This moment represents the next step in the strategic evolution of our Indianapolis office,” said P. Douglas Barr, member and managing director of SKO. “We are building a firm designed for businesses navigating high‑stakes disputes, detailed transactions and regulatory demands. Paul, Keith, Daniel and Andrew bring strengths that directly advance that mission. Their experience further bolsters our ability to serve clients with the insight, collaboration and business‑oriented counsel that define the future of SKO.”

Mackowski and Mundrick join the firm as members, each bringing extensive experience advising business clients on complex commercial matters. Faust and Kirtley join as counsel, further enhancing the firm’s litigation capabilities.

These additions reinforce SKO’s interdisciplinary approach to serving clients in key industries including banking, finance, healthcare, real estate and other commercial services. With more than 140 attorneys across six offices in Indiana and Kentucky, SKO is a firm built to meet the dynamic needs of business and regulatory clients operating in competitive, fast‑moving environments.

SKO’s strategic transformation reflects the firm’s focus on delivering integrated legal and business insight through collaborative teams that support clients across state lines and industry sectors. SKO is trusted by businesses in Indiana, Kentucky and beyond to support organizational goals and solve challenges.

NEW ATTORNEY BIOGRAPHIES

Paul Mackowski, member

Paul represents businesses, financial institutions and individuals in complex commercial and consumer disputes from pre‑litigation investigation through trial and appeal. His experience spans breach‑of‑contract and warranty claims, professional and products liability, deceptive trade practices, insurance coverage disputes and real‑estate‑related litigation. Paul also advises clients on internal investigations and manages bankruptcy and creditors’ rights matters, including receiverships and asset liquidations.

Keith Mundrick, member

Keith represents businesses, financial institutions, nonprofits and individuals in commercial finance, real estate and strategic risk matters. His work centers on structuring and closing credit facilities, handling multi‑property real estate matters, and guiding clients through amendments, workouts, restructurings and collateral enforcement. Keith also serves as outside general counsel to organizations facing significant contractual and operational complexity, aligning legal strategy with broader business objectives.

R. Daniel Faust, counsel to the firm

Daniel represents businesses and individuals in commercial, real estate and tort litigation. He brings significant first‑chair trial experience and is known for disciplined case management, clear communication and strategies aligned with client priorities. Daniel has handled major eminent domain matters, real estate litigation, creditor protection in foreclosure proceedings, and a broad range of labor, employment and commercial disputes.

W. Andrew Kirtley, counsel to the firm

Andrew represents businesses in civil litigation from initial claim investigation through final resolution. He evaluates exposure, aligns litigation strategy with operational goals and delivers efficient solutions to support long‑term business objectives. Andrew defends companies in matters involving negligence, bad faith, statutory claims, premises liability and commercial disputes, and previously served as a deputy attorney general defending Indiana state agencies in federal Section 1983 litigation.

The research team analyzed 31,977 unique URLs appearing in the top 8 organic Google results for 32 high-intent legal keywords across 288 major U.S. metropolitan areas, producing a dataset of 73,674 total ranking appearances. Every URL was parsed for more than a dozen structural attributes, including length, path depth, keyword presence, geographic signals, domain composition, HTTPS usage, word separators, file extensions, and trailing slash patterns. Sites were classified as law firm websites, legal directories, or resource sites, and all findings were segmented by ranking position, practice area, and individual keyword.

“There is a lot of conventional wisdom in legal SEO about how to structure your URLs, but very little of it is grounded in data at this scale,” said Jason Bland, Founder and CEO of Custom Legal Marketing. “We wanted to move the conversation from opinions to evidence. When you can look at what 31,977 ranking URLs actually have in common across 288 cities, the patterns become very clear, and some of them challenge assumptions that firms have been operating on for years.”

Key Findings of the Law Firm URL Study

The study examined eight practice areas personal injury, criminal defense, family law, estate planning, business law, workers’ compensation, medical malpractice, and employment law. While workers’ compensation and medical malpractice are sub-practice areas of personal injury, many regions have firms that specialize in those ares or exclude them from their practice set which is why Sequoia researches them as standalone practices. The study found that URL-level signals vary significantly across practice areas. Patterns that hold strongly in one practice area may be irrelevant or even reversed in another.

Among the headline findings:

• One URL attribute showed a consistent, monotonic correlation with higher rankings across every single position from 1 through 8, with the largest positional spread of any metric measured in the study. The full report identifies which attribute it is and breaks down the rates by practice area.
• Nearly half of all Position 1 organic results for one major practice area keyword are homepages, while another practice area shows a homepage rate below 7% in the top 3. The report maps homepage viability for all 32 keywords studied and identifies which firm types can lean on their homepage versus which need dedicated inner pages.
• Google’s treatment of keyword synonyms produced several significant outliers in the data. For certain keyword pairs, top-ranking pages almost never contain the exact searched term in the URL, because Google is resolving the query to pages using a different but semantically equivalent phrase. The report identifies these synonym mappings and explains what they mean for page planning.
• Legal directories occupy a dramatically larger share of Position 1 results than most firms realize. The study quantifies the exact percentage at every position and explains what this means for law firm URL strategy in the most competitive slots.
• Keyword-rich domain names and city-name domains, two investments that law firms have historically paid premium prices for, showed no correlation with higher rankings in the study. The rate of keyword presence in domains was virtually identical at Position 1 and Position 8. The report breaks down where those URL-level signals actually do show positional advantages.
• The study identified an optimal character count range for law firm URLs and an optimal path depth range, both of which challenge the common “shorter is always better” assumption. The full data tables and position-by-position breakdowns are included in the report.

Practice Area Segmentation

Each of the eight practice areas receives a dedicated deep dive in the report, with keyword-level data, recommended URL structures, and identification of outlier keywords where Google’s semantic understanding creates unexpected ranking patterns. The analysis covers all 32 keywords individually and identifies which practice areas benefit most from geographic URL signals, which can rely on homepages for head terms, and which require the deepest site architecture.

About the Methodology

All data was collected in March 2026 using CLM Sequoia’s Research Tool. Queries were executed on desktop with precise geographic targeting across 288 U.S. metro areas ranging from the largest cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston) to mid-size markets (Bend, OR, Meridian, ID, Sparks, NV). URL attributes were extracted programmatically from each ranking result with no reliance on third-party SEO tools or estimated metrics. The study analyzed top-level, high-intent practice area keywords. The report includes a full methodology section and research disclaimer.

Accessing the Full Report

The full report on Law Firm SEO and URL Structures is available here. The report, includes all data tables, interactive charts, practice area deep dives, and an 8-point URL playbook.

This ruling follows the previously reported hung jury and mistrial in November 2025. As detailed in Aiello Harris Abate, Law Group PC, Achieves Hung Jury in Federal Tax-Fraud Trial of New Jersey CPA, defense attorneys James A. Abate and Jay J. Freireich of Aiello Harris Abate Law Group PC secured the hung-jury outcome after deliberations were unable to reach a unanimous verdict. At that time, the Honorable Zahid N. Quraishi, U.S.D.J.  reserved decision on a pending motion for acquittal.

In a detailed written Opinion and Order issued on February 13, 2026, the Court determined that the Government failed to present sufficient evidence from which a rational jury could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Applying the standard under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29, the Court concluded that the evidence did not establish that Mr. Demba willfully violated a known legal duty — a required element in criminal tax prosecutions.

The tax fraud case involved Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) credit calculations, an area the Court recognized as particularly complex within federal tax law. The Opinion emphasized that inaccuracies alone are insufficient to prove criminal intent and that the Government failed to negate Mr. Demba’s good-faith belief regarding the methodology used.

The Court further found insufficient evidence to support the obstruction charge, concluding that the record did not establish corrupt intent beyond a reasonable doubt. The Judgment of Acquittal prevents retrial under double jeopardy principles and brings the matter to a final resolution.

Aiello Harris Abate Law Group PC, which represents clients in complex criminal defense matters including Federal and New Jersey tax fraud cases, successfully defended Mr. Demba throughout the proceedings, led by James A. Abate and Jay J. Freireich.

CASE INFORMATION

United States District Court – District Of New Jersey – Trenton, NJ
United States of America v. Christopher Ward Demba
Case No. 3:25-cr-00032-ZNQ

CLM ran the study through its proprietary CLM Sequoia platform, pulling the top 5 organic Google results for 28 legal keywords across 24 major U.S. cities in February of 2026. Each law firm page in the dataset was then fed through Winston AI, which scored every page for AI-generated content percentage. CLM also captured word count and readability scores for each URL. When the dust settled, the working dataset covered 2,435 law firm ranking appearances, 1,618 unique URLs, and 1,021 unique domains across 8 practice areas including personal injury, criminal defense, family law, estate planning, business law, workers’ compensation, medical malpractice, and employment law.

The headline finding? AI content percentage and organic ranking position have no statistically significant connection. The Spearman correlation came back at r = 0.065 with a p-value of 0.138, which lands well above the 0.05 cutoff that would indicate a real relationship.

“For the past two years, the loudest conversation in legal marketing has been whether AI content helps or hurts your Google rankings,” said Jason Bland, Co-Founder and CEO of Custom Legal Marketing. “We went out and measured it across more than 2,400 ranking appearances. The answer turned out to be neither. You are not going to leapfrog your competitors by publishing AI content, and you are not going to get slapped for it either. The algorithm just does not care.”

Key Findings on AI Content and Law Firm Rankings

AI content shows up on nearly every ranking law firm page, but the way it distributes is striking. Roughly 54.7% of ranking pages have 5% or less AI-detected content. On the other end, 21.4% clock in at 70% or higher. What is missing is the middle. Fewer than one in four pages land in the 6 to 69% range. Rather than a gradual shift toward AI adoption, the industry appears to be splitting into two distinct camps: firms that barely use it and firms that use it for almost everything.

Of all the practice areas CLM studied, personal injury has the most AI content by a wide margin. The median AI detection for PI pages sits at 14%, which is roughly five times the 3% median across all practice areas. Not a single personal injury law firm page in the top 5 results came back clean. Every one of them had some detectable AI content. Criminal defense, on the other hand, looks completely different. Eighty-seven percent of pages ranking at Position 1 for criminal defense keywords had less than 10% AI, making it the most human-written category in the study.

The data points toward a blended workflow as the strongest approach. Pages landing in the 26 to 50% AI range, which likely reflects content where a writer used AI for drafting or research and then did heavy editing, posted the best average ranking position at 2.83 and the highest average word count at 2,958 words. Meanwhile, pages at the 71 to 100% AI level averaged only 1,561 words and ranked a bit worse at an average position of 3.23.

There is also a readability problem that firms using AI heavily need to know about. CLM found a correlation of r = -0.233 (p < 0.0001) between AI percentage and readability score. Put simply, the more AI on the page, the harder it is to read. That matters on its own, but it also matters because word count (r = -0.089, p = 0.042) turned out to have a stronger statistical tie to rankings than AI percentage did. Firms pumping out AI content without editing it down may be quietly undermining their own performance through readability issues they have never measured.

Where a firm is located also plays a role in how much AI content surrounds it in the search results. Columbus, OH came in as the biggest outlier at 59% mean AI content and a 76% median, most likely because national firms dominate the rankings there. On the low end, San Antonio (16.9%), Jacksonville (18.3%), and Houston (19.3%) had the least AI content, reflecting markets where regional and local firms still rely on traditionally written pages.

Study Methodology

CLM built the study inside Sequoia’s Research Tool, which runs regular studies to train its AI marketing platform.

The team executed all 672 keyword-city queries on mobile, matching how Google indexes and ranks pages under its mobile-first approach. Pages were scraped using a headless browser with an HTTP fallback for pages that resisted rendering. Winston AI handled the detection side, returning a percentage score for each page, estimating how much of the content appeared to be machine-generated. All told, CLM processed 1,889,828 words across the full law firm dataset. Of those, 615,934 words (32.6%) came back flagged as AI-generated.

The 24 cities in the study span the country: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Austin, Jacksonville, Fort Worth, Columbus, Charlotte, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Seattle, Denver, Boston, Nashville, El Paso, Detroit, and Oklahoma City.

Implications for Law Firms

Bland was blunt about what the findings should mean for how firms spend their marketing dollars. “What gets you from Position 5 to Position 1 in competitive legal markets has not changed. It is still domain authority, content that actually says something, pages people can read without a headache, strong E-E-A-T signals, and solid local SEO. AI content does not appear anywhere on that list. If a firm is pouring money into AI content production but ignoring editorial quality and link building, they are focused on the wrong thing.”

One other number stood out: 18.2% of Position 1 results for personal injury keywords came from pages with 70%+ AI content. But those pages belong to a handful of firms with enormous authority behind them, which strongly suggests it is the domain strength doing the work, not the AI-generated copy.