A law firm website needs a dedicated page for each practice area, attorney credentials a reader can verify through outside links, headings that name the places the firm serves, a phone number and short form on every page, and a chat that reaches a real person. Everything else on the site is secondary to those five.
A large share of our client work is for law firms. We rebuilt a Phoenix criminal defense firm's site page by page, built a 305 page static site for a Kansas defense practice, and replaced a dated theme for a business litigation firm that then expanded into personal injury. The firms are different. What their prospective clients look for is not.
Someone looking for a lawyer is usually worried, often on a phone, and comparing several firms at once. They check a short list of things, quickly. A site that answers the list gets the call. A site that makes them hunt gets closed.
This post is that list, and what we put on a page to satisfy each item.
What does a law firm website need?
A law firm website needs five things: a page for every practice area, credentials that can be checked, headings that name the location served, a way to make contact from any page, and a chat that hands off to a person. The table shows what each one is for.
| Must-have | What the visitor is checking | What goes on the page |
|---|---|---|
| Practice area pages | Do you handle my exact problem | One page per type of matter, written about that matter |
| Verifiable credentials | Are you who you say you are | Admissions, awards, and memberships linked to the outside profile |
| Location in headings | Do you work where my case is | The city, county, or court named in the title and main heading |
| Fast contact | Can I reach you right now | Phone number in the header and a short form, on every page |
| Chat | Can I ask something without committing | An immediate answer, then a person |
None of this is exotic. When we look at a firm's site, we check these five before anything clever.
Why does every practice area need its own page?
Every practice area needs its own page because people search for their specific problem, not for a lawyer in general. A person facing a criminal charge and a person in a contract dispute are looking for different pages, and a single list of services answers neither of them well.
On the Tamou Law Group rebuild, every practice page is rendered from a spec file through one template system. The practical effect is that every page has the same structure. A design change rolls across the site in one run instead of sixty separate edits, so the pages do not drift apart over time.
For AZ Litigation Group we rebuilt the six business litigation pages, then added a personal injury practice as a hub with eight supporting pages. That hub and spoke shape is worth copying. The hub explains the practice area broadly and links down. Each supporting page covers one kind of case in depth and links back up.
We describe the page structure itself in how to write service pages that rank and convert.
How should attorney credentials appear on the site?
Attorney credentials should be stated plainly and linked to a source the firm does not control: the state bar's directory entry, the award organization's own profile page, the association's member listing. A badge image with no link proves nothing, and a careful reader knows that.
This is the cheapest trust you can add. The profiles already exist. Linking to them takes minutes, and it turns "award-winning" from a claim into something a visitor can confirm in one click. The same goes for photos. A real photo of the attorney in the real office does more than a stock image of a gavel.
It is also the heart of what search guidelines call E-E-A-T: show the experience and let the reader check it.
Advertising rules for lawyers differ by state, so check your own bar's rules before publishing claims about awards, results, or specialties.
Why should headings name the location?
Headings should name the location because legal problems are local. A visitor needs to know in the first second that the firm handles cases in their city, their county, or the court on their paperwork. If the main heading does not say where, many visitors will assume the answer is no.
That does not mean stamping out a page for every town on the map. On the Tamou Law Group site we built 25 courthouse pages, each about a specific court. For Gayer Law, a Kansas practice that needed to appear in searches across a dozen counties, we built 170 city and offense pages. One detail from that build: the attorney also prosecutes in three counties, so the build knows never to market defense work there. A location page should reflect where the firm really practices, including where it does not.
The line between a useful local page and a thin one is covered in city pages vs doorway pages.
How should a law firm handle contact and chat?
Contact should take one tap from anywhere on the site: a phone number in the header, a short form on every page, and a chat for people who are not ready to call. A person with a legal problem late at night may well contact the first firm that makes it easy.
Keep the form short. Name, phone, and a sentence about what happened is enough to start a conversation. Every extra field is a reason to leave.
Chat is the easiest of the five to get wrong. A scripted widget that collects an email address and promises a callback is a slower form. We built Ask Tamou to do it differently: the visitor gets an immediate, careful answer, and the moment someone at the firm wants to step in, they reply from a messaging app on their phone and the visitor sees it in the same window. The handoff is the feature.
What can a law firm website leave out?
A law firm website can leave out anything that does not help a worried person decide to call: image sliders, stock photography, long mission statements, and pages written to fill a menu. Fewer, better pages beat a large site where half the pages say nothing.
It can often leave out complexity too. The Gayer Law site is static files with nothing to patch. A solo practice does not need the same machinery as a firm publishing every week, and the simpler option is frequently the right one.
Frequently asked questions
Should a law firm website have a blog?
Only if the articles answer questions real people ask. For AZ Litigation Group we deepened 105 existing posts into reference articles instead of adding more thin ones. A small number of thorough articles is worth more than a long archive nobody reads.
Is WordPress a good choice for a law firm website?
It can be. We maintain law firm sites on WordPress and build others as static files. WordPress suits firms that publish often and want staff to edit pages. A static build suits firms that want speed and nothing to maintain.
How often should a law firm website be updated?
Update it whenever a fact changes: an attorney joins or leaves, an office moves, a practice area is added. Beyond that, review the main practice pages on a regular schedule so that nothing on them has gone out of date.
Does a solo attorney need a large website?
No. A solo attorney needs the same five things as a large firm, at a smaller scale: a page for each kind of case taken, checkable credentials, named locations, and easy contact.
If your firm's site is missing one of these, tell us which one and we will show you how we would fix it.