Law firm websites: concept and build

Visibility is decided during the build, not afterwards. Structure, page titles, descriptions, internal linking and loading time are set up during the project instead of being retrofitted later.

That now counts twice over: more and more clients ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini or Grok for a law firm and receive a short list of names and sources. Those systems cite explanatory content on a firm’s own domain and clearly assigned topic pages — exactly what the work on practice areas, structure and copy produces.

We start by looking at what your existing website actually delivers — which pages reach visitors at all, which searches bring them, where they drop off and which practice areas cannot be found. We add a look at three to five competitors in your core areas.

In parallel we clarify with you who the website is meant to reach. That is rarely clients only: referring firms at home and abroad, directory researchers, candidates and journalists read the same website with entirely different questions. This produces the target picture everything is later measured against.

This is the core of our work and the point where we differ from a web agency. From working with firms of every size since 2004, and from the ranking submissions we write every year, we know how a practice area has to be named to be read in the market — and which industries actually appear as clients there.

For each practice area we define the label (the one used in the market, not the one used inside the firm), the order of the content, the level of detail, the reference matters that may be named, and the contacts. The same for every industry you serve. The result is one page per practice area that carries the firm and per relevant industry — not a single “Our services” page that is found for nothing.

Presentation also includes the honest recommendation of which topics you should leave alone: a firm promoting twelve fields equally loudly is seen as a specialist in none of them.

The architecture follows from the selection of practice areas and industries: which pages exist, how they connect and how deep the hierarchy may go. Smaller firms do better with a flat structure; international firms need a breakdown by country, office or practice group.

We fix the URL structure before the build, not after. It is the part that is most expensive to change later — every subsequent renaming costs redirects and visibility. This includes lawyer profiles: a dedicated, permanently reachable page per fee earner, because those are exactly the pages clients, researchers and journalists look for.

We write the copy or edit your drafts — practice area and industry pages, lawyer profiles, references, firm profile, careers pages. Tone of voice follows your positioning and the professional conduct rules of your jurisdiction.

For reference matters we clarify in advance what may be published: client names only with clearance, otherwise the anonymised description that still says something. We know this work from ranking submissions — the same line between publishable and confidential information applies there.

Where a corporate identity exists we follow it. Where it does not, we develop it with you: typeface, colours, imagery and the question of whether and how people are shown. For lawyer photographs one simple rule applies that many firms fail: identical crop, identical head height, identical background. Inconsistent portraits are immediately obvious in a team overview.

The layout is designed for small screens from the outset. A substantial share of visits comes from phones, and lawyer profiles in particular are often opened on the move.

We build on a common, maintainable system — usually WordPress, because it lets you carry on without us and because skilled people for it are available everywhere. We use a different system where there is a reason for it, not out of habit.

This includes loading time and image optimisation, clean mark-up of your content for search engines and AI systems, accessibility within the applicable requirements, and the mandatory legal pages: imprint, privacy notice and a cookie solution that genuinely loads only after consent. Forms, newsletter sign-up and appointment booking are connected in a privacy-compliant way.

Firms with international work need at least an English version. We set it up properly — separate URLs per language, correct language mark-up, no half-finished machine translations — and translate the content professionally rather than literally. Legal terms often have no one-to-one equivalent in English; the wrong choice is immediately obvious to any reader from the target market.

At the end we hand the website over with training for the people who will maintain it — usually the secretariat or the marketing team. A firm that can add new lawyer profiles, articles and references itself keeps the site alive.

On request we take over day-to-day operation: updates, backups, uptime monitoring, regular checks for broken links and missing image descriptions, and content maintenance after each ranking cycle.