Most law firm websites are written for other lawyers. They open with the firm's founding year, list credentials, describe a philosophy of service, and then, somewhere below the fold, mention what the firm actually does. The person reading is usually in the worst week of their life and wants three things answered immediately: can you help with this specific problem, what is likely to happen next, and what will it cost. Web content for lawyers works when it answers those questions in the order the reader is asking them, in language a non-lawyer can follow, without saying anything the firm's advertising rules would not allow. This page covers what to publish, what to avoid, and how to judge whether a writer understands the difference.
One substantial page per practice area, written for the client
The single largest gap on most firm sites is depth. A practice area that generates a meaningful share of the firm's revenue deserves a page that explains what the process looks like from the client's side: who they will deal with, what documents are needed, roughly how long the stages take, what usually goes wrong, and what happens at the first hearing or meeting. A paragraph and a contact form is not a practice-area page, it is a placeholder, and it competes against firms that have written the real thing. Depth also has a search effect. Google's guidance on helpful, reliable, people-first content describes content that demonstrates first-hand expertise and answers the question fully as the target, which is a fair description of a lawyer explaining their own process. The useful test is whether a prospective client could read the page and correctly describe, to a family member, what working with you would involve.
The questions clients type before they call anyone
Alongside practice-area pages sit the questions people search at the point of panic. How long do I have to file. What is my case likely worth. Do I have to go to court. What does a retainer cover. Can I change lawyer mid-case. These pages rarely rank for the expensive head terms, and they are frequently the pages that produce the phone call, because the reader arrives with a specific worry and finds it addressed by name. They also give the rest of the site something to link to, which helps the practice-area pages that matter commercially. Write them as answers rather than as marketing. A page that says the honest thing, including that the answer depends on facts you would need to hear, reads as competence. A page that dodges the question in order to force a call reads as evasion, and the reader has three other firms open in other tabs.
What the advertising rules do to the copy
Legal marketing copy is governed, and the governing happens at state level. State bar advertising rules control testimonials, case results, claims of specialisation, comparative statements and the disclaimers that must accompany them, and they vary enough that copy which is fine in one state creates exposure in another. The practical consequences are specific: past results usually need context and a disclaimer, the word specialist is frequently restricted to certified specialisations, and superlatives such as best are treated as unverifiable claims in a number of jurisdictions. A writer who has never asked which state you are licensed in has not read the rules that apply to you, and it is your licence at stake, not theirs. Beyond the bar rules, the Federal Trade Commission's endorsement guidance applies to reviews and testimonials that a business solicits or incentivises, which is worth knowing before anyone builds a review-gathering campaign into the content plan.
Buying the writing, and who should do it
Legal content is usually bought in one of three shapes: as part of a website build, as an ongoing content retainer, or by the page from a specialist writer. Firms most often buy it bundled with web design and search work, because the pages, the site structure and the queries they target are the same decision made three times if they are split. Whichever shape you choose, the non-negotiable is attorney review before publication, and a workflow that makes it easy rather than a bottleneck. Ask a prospective writer for two legal pages they wrote, in your practice area if possible, and read them as a client would. Then ask how they handle sources, how they handle jurisdiction differences, and what their process is when the firm's answer to a common question is genuinely it depends. The answers to those three questions separate people who write about law from people who write marketing copy with legal words in it.
Questions people ask about web content for lawyers
How many pages does a law firm site need?
Fewer than most content plans propose. A substantial page for each practice area you want work in, a location page for each office, a genuine attorney biography for each lawyer, and a growing set of answers to the questions clients actually ask. That is a better use of budget than a weekly blog post on legal news that no prospective client is searching for.
Can we publish case results?
In many states yes, with context and a disclaimer making clear that past results do not predict future outcomes, but the rules differ by jurisdiction and some are considerably stricter than others. Check your own state bar's advertising rules before publishing figures, and have the firm, not the marketing vendor, sign off on the wording.
Should attorneys write the content themselves?
The best pages usually come from an attorney explaining their process to a writer who then makes it readable, followed by attorney review. Lawyers writing unaided tend to write for colleagues; writers working unaided tend to produce fluent pages that are subtly wrong. The interview-plus-review model gets the accuracy of one and the clarity of the other.
Does AI-written legal content rank?
Google's stated position is that it rewards helpful content regardless of how it was produced, and treats scaled content made mainly to manipulate rankings as spam. The practical risk for a law firm is not the ranking, it is publishing an inaccurate statement of law under your own name. Whatever the drafting method, an attorney has to read it before it goes live.