Law firm web development is bought by a partner who has been shown three portfolios and cannot tell them apart, and the way to tell them apart is to stop looking at the screenshots and start asking what the finished site has to do. A law firm's site has four jobs the developer must deliver and a bar rule the copy must survive: it has to convert a visitor into an intake without losing the call, it has to carry practice-area pages that rank and that a state bar's advertising rules allow, it has to load fast on a phone at a courthouse, and it has to be editable by the firm after the developer has moved on. This page sets out those four jobs as questions to put to a developer, the evidence to ask for on each, and the rule that decides the copy. The law firm SEO company guide on this site covers the ranking half.
Intake first: the site is a phone that also has pages
A firm's site exists to turn a visitor into a consultation, and the development brief starts with the intake path: a click-to-call number visible on every screen size, a short form that asks only what the intake team needs, a confirmation that tells the prospect what happens next, and a route from the form into the firm's intake software or inbox that somebody watches. Ask the developer to show a live site they built, submit its form on a phone, and time how long the firm took to respond. A developer who has never watched a form submission land is a designer, and the brief should say so before the contract does.
Practice-area pages: the structure a rule can survive
Every practice area is a page, every page states what the firm does for whom in that area, and every claim on it has to survive the state bar's advertising rule, which in most states follows the ABA model rule on communications about a lawyer's services linked below: no misleading statements, no unverifiable comparisons, and specific handling of specialisation claims and results. The developer builds the structure, one page per practice area with room for the city pages beneath it, and the firm supplies copy the rule allows. A developer who offers to write the pages should be asked which rule they will write them under; the answer is the test.
Speed, accessibility and the phone at the courthouse
A prospect searching for a lawyer is often on a phone in a hallway, and a site that takes seconds to show its number has lost the call. The brief names measurable targets from Google's search essentials, linked below, for page experience, asks for the numbers on a live site the developer built, and asks for accessibility to a stated standard, because a firm's site is a public accommodation argument waiting to happen. The evidence is a performance report on a real page and an accessibility audit, not a promise, and both belong in the contract as acceptance tests.
The site the firm can edit, and what the contract says about leaving
The developer leaves; the site stays. The brief asks who owns the domain, the hosting account, the code and the content, in writing; whether the firm's staff can add a practice-area page and a lawyer's biography without the developer; and what a change costs after launch. A site built on a platform the developer alone controls is a subscription in disguise. The law firm SEO company guide on this site is the next question, because a site that cannot be edited cannot be ranked, and the agencies indexed on this site are listed on what they publish about exactly these terms.
Questions people ask about law firm web development
What should law firm web development include?
An intake path that works on a phone and lands somewhere watched, one page per practice area structured to take city pages beneath it, measurable speed and accessibility targets as acceptance tests, and ownership of the domain, hosting, code and content by the firm.
Which rule governs the copy on a law firm website?
The state bar's advertising rule, which in most states follows the ABA model rule on communications concerning a lawyer's services: no misleading statements, no unverifiable comparisons, and specific handling of specialisation and results claims. The firm supplies copy under it; the developer builds the structure.
How do I compare two law firm web developers?
Submit the intake form on a live site each one built and time the firm's response; ask for a performance report and an accessibility audit on a real page; ask who owns the domain and code after launch. Portfolios look alike; those answers do not.