The 9pm test: Spanish-speaking accident victims and your website

Picture someone who was hit by a delivery truck this afternoon. It's 9pm. They're home from urgent care, their arm is in a sling, and they're scrolling on their phone, looking for a lawyer. Spanish is the language they're most comfortable in. They type a question in Spanish, or open a firm's website and look for a way to read it in Spanish.

What do they find? A study published in September 2026, called the 9pm Test, checked exactly that.

What the study found

The 9pm Test looked at personal injury firm websites in two of the largest Spanish-speaking markets in the country and asked a simple question: does the site have a page that is actually written in Spanish?

• In Los Angeles, only 16 of 139 readable personal injury sites had a page actually written in Spanish.
• In Houston, only 23 of 142 did.

"Actually written in Spanish" is the key phrase. A button that runs the page through a translation widget doesn't count. Neither does a line at the bottom that says "Se habla español" with no Spanish content behind it.

Why this matters for AI answers too

AI assistants answer in the language they're asked in, and they look for sources that match. A question like "abogado de accidentes de camión en Houston" needs Spanish pages to draw from. If very few firms have them, the few that do have an open lane.

This is one of the rare places where a firm can stand out by doing the basics well. You're not competing with every firm in the city. You're competing with the small group that bothered to write real Spanish pages.

Four fixes that pass the 9pm test

1. A page written natively in Spanish, not machine-translated. Have it written or reviewed by a fluent speaker. It should cover the basics an injured person needs: what to do after an accident, how fees work, what happens on the first call, and which case types you take.
2. A phone number people can tap. On mobile, the number should be a tap-to-call link, visible without scrolling. A tired person with one free hand will not copy and paste a number.
3. A Spanish form that says what happens next. Not just "Enviar". Tell them who will call back, how soon, and in which language. Uncertainty is a reason to close the tab.
4. A named Spanish speaker after hours. If someone calls at 9pm, who answers, and do they speak Spanish? If the honest answer is "voicemail", say when they'll hear back, and make sure that person speaks Spanish.

Mistakes that fail the test

Firms that do try often trip on the same few things. Each one is easy to check on your own site.

• Machine translation of legal terms. Words like "settlement", "liability" and "contingency fee" come out wrong or stiff, and a native speaker notices in the first sentence.
• One Spanish page for everything. A person searching about a truck crash wants a page about truck crashes. If you take car, truck and work injury cases, each deserves its own short Spanish page.
• A Spanish page with an English form. The visitor reads the page in Spanish, taps the button, and lands on a form in English. Many will stop there.
• Promising a Spanish speaker who isn't there. If the page says someone speaks Spanish and the evening call goes to an English-only service, you've lost the trust the page built.

Then make it findable

A great Spanish page that nothing links to won't help much. Link to it clearly from your homepage and main menu. Mark it as Spanish in the page code so search engines and AI tools know what language it's in. If your directory profiles list languages spoken, make sure Spanish is there and matches the attorneys and staff who actually speak it.

Then test it the way your client would. Ask the AI tools your Spanish-language questions, logged out, and see whether your firm comes up. Run each question a few times, because answers vary from run to run.

A note on the rules

Spanish-language marketing is still lawyer advertising, with the same rules about truthful claims and no guarantees. Some states add their own steps. Florida, for example, has an advertising filing process, and ads in another language are filed with an English translation. Check the Florida Bar's guidance or your own state bar before publishing.

Not legal advice. Check your state bar's rules.

Where to start

Open your own website on your phone tonight, at 9pm, and try to find a Spanish page in under ten seconds. Then call your own number and see who picks up. Those two checks will tell you more than any report.

If you'd like a wider view, our free AI scan can include Spanish questions for your city, across 4 AI tools, with a recorded walkthrough within 2 business days. No call needed.