What a Law Firm Website Actually Needs

The advertising rules come first, because they constrain everything else

Lawyer advertising is regulated by the bar or law society that admitted you, and the rules vary by jurisdiction. Several patterns recur across them and are worth knowing before a word is written.

Claiming to be a specialist or an expert is restricted in many jurisdictions unless you hold a formal certification in that field. Describing past results usually requires a disclaimer explaining that outcomes depend on the facts of each case. Guaranteeing an outcome is generally prohibited outright. Testimonials are restricted in some places and conditioned in others.

Most firms also need a clear statement that the site is not legal advice and that using it creates no attorney-client relationship, plus identification of the responsible lawyer and office.

None of this is a reason to write a dull website. It is a reason to check your own jurisdiction's rules before publishing, because the cost of getting it wrong is a disciplinary matter rather than a bad conversion rate.

One page per matter, in the words a person in trouble would use

People do not search for "litigation services". They search for the situation they are in: what happens if I contest a will, can my employer do this, how long do I have to file, what happens at a first hearing.

Each of those is a page. It should describe the situation, what the process normally involves and in what order, the realistic timescale, and what the person should do immediately — including preserving documents, which is the advice most often given too late.

Write for someone who has never instructed a lawyer. That person does not know whether their problem is even the kind lawyers handle, and the page that tells them is the page they remember.

Where you are admitted is not a detail

Legal advice is jurisdictional. A firm admitted in one state or country cannot simply act in another, and a website that does not say plainly where it practises wastes the time of everyone who contacts it from elsewhere.

State the jurisdictions on the homepage, on each lawyer profile, and on every practice area page. It is not repetition — someone arriving from a search lands on the practice area page, not the homepage, and that is where the question occurs to them.

The same logic applies to the courts you appear before and the languages your team works in. Both are filters people apply, and both are cheap to state.

How you charge, said plainly

Fee structure is the question most firms avoid and most prospective clients want answered before they will pick up the phone. It does not require publishing a rate card.

What it requires is naming the model: hourly, fixed fee for defined work, contingency where permitted, retainer, or a mix by matter type. Say whether the first consultation is free or charged, and how long it lasts. Say what typically sits outside the fee — court fees, expert reports, filing costs — because those surprise people later.

A firm that explains its billing model reads as confident. A firm that will not mention money until the meeting reads as though the number is bad news.

Lawyer profiles are the most-read pages you have

People hire a person, not a logo, and the profile pages consistently get more attention than the firm overview. They are also the pages that carry the credibility signals search engines weigh most heavily on subjects where bad information causes harm.

Include full name, bar admissions with jurisdictions and year, the courts before which they appear, education, the matter types they actually handle, languages, and a real photograph. Where publishing a registration or roll number is permitted and normal in your jurisdiction, include it — it is directly verifiable.

Then byline the practice area pages to the lawyer who handles that work and link to the profile. An anonymous page about a serious legal problem is asking for trust it has not offered any basis for.

Intake: what to ask, and what not to

A contact form on a law firm site has a problem the other sites in this series do not. Before a firm can take a matter it has to check for conflicts, and information sent by a stranger through a web form arrives before that check has happened.

The common approach is to keep the form minimal — name, contact details, the general area of law, and no details of the matter — with a clear notice that information sent through the form is not confidential and that no relationship exists until the firm confirms in writing.

Resist the temptation to add a "tell us about your case" textarea. It feels helpful and it invites exactly the disclosure the notice above is trying to prevent.