Quotes for law firm sites vary by an order of magnitude, and the spread is rarely about the design. It is about how many practice areas need real content, whether someone qualified reviews the copy against the conduct rules, whether intake is integrated, and who is on the hook for accessibility. Those four explain most of the difference between quotes.
Content is usually the largest line
A firm with eight practice areas needs eight substantial pages plus attorney biographies, and a writer who can produce them without generating claims that breach the rules is not cheap. Firms who intend to write it themselves usually do not, which is the commonest cause of a project stalling for months. Price the writing honestly at the start or expect to pay for it later in delay.
Compliance review is a real cost and a necessary one
Communications about a lawyer's services are governed by the conduct rules of every jurisdiction the firm practises in, and those rules differ on specialisation claims, past results, testimonials and required disclaimers. Someone has to read the site against the applicable rules. Web design firms rarely do this, so either the firm allocates a partner's time or it buys the review.
Intake integration is where the value is
Connecting the form and the phone to a case management system, with conflicts checking before anyone reads the detail and a tracked response time, is the part of the project that changes revenue. It is also the part most often cut from a budget, which is why so many firms pay for a new site and see no change in signed matters.
What a low quote usually excludes
Cheap quotes typically exclude content, the compliance review, accessibility work, the intake integration and any ongoing maintenance, and they sometimes place the domain or hosting in the vendor's name. Ask for the exclusions in writing and ask who owns each account. A quote with no exclusions list is a quote that has not been read.
Questions people ask about law firm website design cost
Is a template site acceptable for a law firm?
It can be, for a small firm, provided the content and the compliance review are real. The risk in the cheap end of the market is a site shared with hundreds of other firms including the copy.
What ongoing costs should we expect?
Hosting, maintenance and updates, plus content additions. Ask for the maintenance arrangement in writing, because an unmaintained site is a security problem as well as a stale one.
Does accessibility add much?
Building to a recognised standard adds modestly to a new build. Remediating a finished site costs several times more, which is the argument for specifying it up front.
Who should own the domain and hosting?
The firm, always, in accounts the firm controls with the vendor added as a user.