Website Design for Lawyers

A law firm website should include a page for each practice area, attorney profiles, and a phone number and short contact form on every page. It should load fast on a phone with good Core Web Vitals, meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA accessibility and carry accurate LegalService markup. It must follow your state's lawyer advertising rules; ABA Model Rules 7.1 and 7.2 require nothing false or misleading and the name and contact details of a lawyer or firm responsible for the content.

Speed: Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are Google's measures of real-world experience on a page: Largest Contentful Paint for loading, Interaction to Next Paint for responsiveness and Cumulative Layout Shift for visual stability. Google's web.dev guidance puts a good experience at an LCP within 2.5 seconds, an INP of 200 milliseconds or less and a CLS of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads, segmented across mobile and desktop.

Google Search Central says Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems and recommends good scores for success with Search, but it also says Google always seeks to show the most relevant content, even if the page experience is sub-par. Speed supports good content; it does not replace it. Because Google uses the mobile version of a site's content for indexing and ranking, the phone layout is the one to get right. Field data for a live site appears in PageSpeed Insights and in Search Console's Core Web Vitals report; lab tools such as Lighthouse cannot measure INP.

Accessibility: WCAG 2.2 Level AA

The W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 has been a W3C Recommendation since 5 October 2023 (the current version is dated 12 December 2024), and the W3C's Accessibility Guidelines Working Group recommends that sites adopt it as their conformance target. Level AA conformance means a page satisfies all the Level A and Level AA success criteria. On a law firm site that includes text alternatives for images (1.1.1), a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal-size text (1.4.3) and labels or instructions wherever a form asks for input (3.3.2).

WCAG 2.2 added criteria that bear on intake: pointer targets such as call and form buttons must be at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels unless an exception applies (2.5.8); help that repeats across pages, such as human contact details, must keep the same order relative to other page content (3.2.6); a focused control must not be entirely hidden by content the site adds, such as a sticky banner (2.4.11); and a login, such as a client portal, cannot require a cognitive function test like remembering a password unless one of the listed exceptions, such as an alternative method, is provided (3.3.8).

The U.S. Department of Justice's web accessibility guidance names WCAG as helpful technical guidance and cautions that a "clean" report from an automated checker or overlay does not necessarily mean everything is accessible; it suggests pairing automated checks with a manual check.

Intake: forms, click-to-call and chat

A law firm site should make it easy for a prospective client to call or write. Put the phone number in the header as a tap-to-call link, keep contact forms short with a visible label on each field and clear error messages, and test every form before launch and after every change so each submission reaches someone who will answer it. Google's page-experience questions ask whether a page avoids intrusive interstitials and lets visitors easily tell the main content from other content, so if the firm uses live chat, place it where it does not cover the content, the phone number or the form. For a practice-specific example, see our best practices for a family lawyer's website.

Markup: LegalService, not Attorney

Structured data gives Google explicit clues about the meaning of a page. Google says it uses the structured data it finds to understand the content of the page and to gather information about the people and companies in the markup. On schema.org, LegalService is "a business that provides legally-oriented services, advice and representation, e.g. law firms," and the older Attorney type is deprecated because "LegalService is more inclusive and less ambiguous."

Mark up only what visitors can see: Google's structured data guidelines say not to mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page. Google also says structured data isn't required for its generative AI search features and there's no special schema.org markup to add for them, and it stopped showing FAQ rich results in Google Search in May 2026. For its AI features, Google points to the same foundational SEO best practices; for AI answer engines beyond Google, see our AI search optimization for law firms.

Advertising rules: ABA Model Rules 7.1 to 7.3

A firm's website is a communication about the lawyer's services, which ABA Model Rule 7.1 governs: no false or misleading communication, meaning no material misrepresentation of fact or law and no omission of a fact needed to keep the statement as a whole from being materially misleading. The rule's comments say a truthful report of past results may still mislead if it creates an unjustified expectation of similar results, and that an appropriate disclaimer or qualifying language may help.

Rule 7.2 adds two checks for a website: a lawyer may be described as a certified specialist only if an approved or ABA-accredited organization did the certifying and the page clearly names it, and any communication made under the rule must include the name and contact information of at least one lawyer or law firm responsible for its content. Its comments also confirm that a lawyer may pay vendors such as website designers. Rule 7.3's comments treat a website as a communication directed to the general public, not a solicitation. The Model Rules serve as models for the ethics rules of most jurisdictions, so the firm's own state rules decide what its site may say about results, reviews and specialization.

The short answer is that it depends on the project. Designers price websites differently: some charge a flat rate, some a per-page rate and others an hourly rate. These five drivers shape the cost of a law firm website:

Page count

Every practice-area page, attorney profile and location page has to be planned, written, designed and tested, so the number of pages is one of the biggest drivers. A firm with many lawyers and practice groups needs far more pages than a two-lawyer firm with three practice areas.

Custom design or a template

A template costs less and can work for a firm that needs a simple online presence with little functionality. A custom design costs more because the layout and features are designed around your firm, its practice areas and its brand.

Custom features and integrations

The extent to which you customize the site drives cost too. Each custom feature, and each connection to another system such as an intake or case-management tool, online scheduling or live chat, has to be built or set up and then tested.

Content

Starting from scratch costs more than redesigning a site whose content already exists. Writing the content yourself can lower the cost; if we write or rework it, that work is part of the project.

Photography and video

Custom attorney headshots, photos of your office, local landmarks or courthouses, and video add design cost, and they give the site a personal touch.

Contact us with your page list and goals.

How long does it take to build a law firm website?

It depends on the number of pages, how much content is ready, the integrations involved and how quickly each round of design review closes. The schedule for your project is set during planning, once the site's structure and key features are defined. Before launch you review a live mock-up of the finished site on desktop, tablet and phone, and the site launches after your final approval.

Should a law firm use a website template or a custom design?

A template costs less and can suit a firm that needs a simple online presence without much functionality. A custom design costs more but is built around your practice areas, your brand and the way clients contact you, instead of fitting your content into someone else's layout. Either way, the site still needs good Core Web Vitals, WCAG 2.2 Level AA accessibility and accurate markup.

Does the ADA apply to a law firm's website?

The Department of Justice's March 2022 guidance says the ADA applies to businesses open to the public and that its requirements cover the goods and services they offer on the web. For those businesses, the guidance says the Department has no regulation setting out detailed web standards, and it names WCAG as helpful technical guidance. Whether and how that applies to a particular firm is a legal question; WCAG 2.2 Level AA is a sound target either way.

Can a law firm website show case results and client reviews?

Results and reviews that a firm publishes are communications about its lawyers' services, so ABA Model Rule 7.1's ban on false or misleading communications applies. The rule's comments say a truthful report of past results can still mislead if it creates unjustified expectations, and that a disclaimer or qualifying language may help. States adopt their own versions of these rules, so check your state's rules on results, testimonials and disclaimers before you publish them.

Does a law firm website need LegalService or Attorney schema?

Use LegalService. Schema.org describes it as a business that provides legally oriented services, advice and representation, such as a law firm, and marks the older Attorney type as deprecated in its favor. Markup should describe only what visitors can see on the page. Google says it uses structured data to understand a page's content, and that no special schema.org markup is needed for its generative AI search features.

Will a new website improve our Google rankings?

A new site can remove problems that hold pages back, such as slow loading, a weak phone layout or missing practice-area pages, but no one can guarantee rankings. Google says Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems, yet it always seeks to show the most relevant content, even if the page experience is sub-par. Its ranking systems are designed to prioritize helpful, reliable content; producing it is ongoing work, which our SEO for lawyers service covers.