A Website for a Law Firm: How Clients Pick a Lawyer Before They Call
Tuesday night, half past ten. A woman in Lublin is sitting at her kitchen table with an envelope she picked up that afternoon: a claim for twenty two thousand zloty, fourteen days to file a response. She types “lawyer civil cases Lublin” into her phone. She has no idea how one professional title differs from another and she is not going to read about a practice founded in 1998. She wants three answers: does anyone here handle cases like mine, what will it cost, and can I get an appointment this week.
She scrolls through three websites. The first greets her with a sentence about “comprehensive legal services for business entities”. The second lists fourteen areas of law without a single concrete detail. The third says plainly: “We handle debt claims and payment disputes. First consultation PLN 250, one hour, and you leave knowing where you stand”. You can guess which one gets the call in the morning. Not because that firm is the strongest on the merits, but because it was the only one that answered the question she actually had in her head.
People do not search for “law”, they search for their own trouble
Clients almost never type the name of a legal field into a search box. They type the situation they are stuck in: how long an uncontested divorce takes, what to do after a summary dismissal, consumer bankruptcy in their town, compensation after an accident at work. A site written in the language of the statute misses those searches completely, even though it is about exactly the same thing.
So it helps to describe your practice on two levels. The field name stays as the heading, and underneath it sit a few sentences about the typical matters, phrased the way a client describes them on the first phone call.
| Heading on the site | What goes underneath |
|---|---|
| Family law | divorce, child maintenance, contact arrangements, splitting property after a separation |
| Employment law | dismissal, harassment at work, unpaid wages, bogus self-employment |
| Debt claims | payment orders, objections, chasing unpaid invoices |
| Personal injury | road accidents, medical negligence, damage to a flat |
| Business clients | contracts, disputes with suppliers, data protection, ongoing retainers |
If one of those areas genuinely brings in enquiries, it deserves its own page rather than a bullet on a list. A page about consumer bankruptcy, describing how the process runs and what it costs, has a real chance of ranking for that phrase plus a town name. A home page covering fourteen fields at once will rank for none of them, because to a search engine it is not about anything in particular. We covered that principle in more depth in the piece on what to write on a business website.
Who will handle the case, meaning a name instead of “a team of experts”
People hire a lawyer, not a letterhead. An “about us” section written in the corporate plural, with no name and no photograph, quietly burns that trust, especially in a one-person practice where everyone knows who is going to answer the phone anyway.
A short note is enough: name, professional title, the bar or law society you are admitted to and your registration number, two sentences about the work you actually do day to day, and a photograph taken in your office or outside the courthouse rather than in a studio against a white backdrop. The registration number does more work than you would think, because a client can check it in the public register, and the simple fact that it can be verified is reassuring. If trainees or specialist colleagues are involved, say who runs the case and who supports it. A client who discovers that arrangement for the first time in the courtroom feels misled.
Fees: silence does not protect you, it just moves the conversation to the phone
The usual objection in this profession is that you cannot quote a price because every case is different. That is true, and nobody expects a price list for divorces. The trouble is that a client who finds no number at all does not drop the subject of money. They simply call and ask about it in the first sentence, and you take ten such calls a week, eight of which lead nowhere.
A few specifics take that weight off the front desk:
- the price of the first consultation stated openly, with its length and whether it is credited against your fee if the client instructs you;
- fee models named in plain language: hourly rate, fixed fee per case, monthly retainer for businesses, success fee where the rules allow one;
- a sentence about what moves the number: how many hearings, how complex the matter is, whether an expert report is needed;
- a separate note on costs that are not your fee at all, such as court fees, stamp duty on a power of attorney and expert deposits.
That last point saves a lot of awkwardness later. A client who read on your site that the court fee is a separate item will not feel tricked when it comes up at the signing.
The lines a law firm website cannot cross
Rules of professional conduct generally let you inform the public about your practice while banning advertising that is intrusive, pushy or damaging to the standing of the profession. In practice that means a description of your services, your practice areas, the price of a consultation and your professional background are fine, while promises of outcomes are not. Lines like “we win 98% of our cases” or “acquittal guaranteed” carry disciplinary risk, and they also read as a warning sign to any client who knows the field. Check the current wording of the rules that bind you before you publish, because this area has been revised in recent years in more than one jurisdiction.
The second line is confidentiality. A case study without a name can still identify a client if the matter was locally notorious. Safer options are descriptions of case types stripped of identifying detail, and reviews collected on Google, where the client decides what to reveal about themselves.
An enquiry form that does not demand a confession
A form on a law firm website has a different job than one on a plumber’s site. The person writing is dealing with a criminal charge against their brother, or with debts, so an open field asking them to describe their situation in detail is a deterrent.
Ask for the minimum instead: name, contact details, one line about the type of matter, and how they would like you to reply. Underneath the form, a short note saying the message goes to the firm only and that getting in touch does not yet create a retainer is worth its space. The option to attach a scan of a court letter speeds up the first conversation more than anything else, because you can see the deadline and the case number before you pick up the phone. Privacy notices and consent are covered in our piece on GDPR and the privacy policy on your website.
Local phrases and a blog that answers real questions
Almost every search in this profession carries a town or a district with it: a divorce lawyer in one city, an employment specialist in another. Your Google Business Profile and your site have to give the identical name, address and phone number, because any mismatch between them costs you positions on the map. We set that out in the guide to local SEO for a small business.
A law firm blog has one advantage over the blog of almost any other service business: people look for legal answers every single day, and they look for them in long sentences. How long a divorce takes when there are children. Whether an employer can change the rota overnight. What to do after receiving a payment order. Each of those texts is a separate door into your practice, and a piece you can send to clients instead of explaining the same thing on the phone for the twentieth time. We described a similar mechanism in the article on the website for an accounting firm, where the filing season works like a bell for search traffic.
How to get that site without a three-month project
With Sitario you describe the practice in a form: your areas, your town, who runs the cases, how you bill. You look at the finished website about an hour later and pay only then, with a money-back guarantee if you do not accept it. The Start plan is PLN 249 one-off, including the first year of hosting, an SSL certificate and a contact form, and renewal from the second year starts at PLN 149 a year. The domain is registered in the firm’s name and the site’s code is yours, so changing provider never means starting from scratch.
After launch the site keeps working. Enquiries from the form land in your inbox and in the panel, so none of them gets lost in a spam folder, and the system suggests article topics based on what people in your area are actually searching for, then sums up once a week in plain language what came of it. There is no technical patching to do, because the site is static and has no plugins to update.
Who this is not for
If you run a firm with a dozen lawyers, a case management system, a client portal showing the status of each matter and an integration with court e-filing, you need a bespoke build. A brochure website will not replace that, and there is no point pretending otherwise.
The same goes for firms building a national profile on expert content, with a newsletter, case-law commentary and a library of downloadable templates behind a sign-up. That is an editorial project rather than a company website. Sitario fits where a firm works locally, takes on individual clients and small businesses, and needs a site that answers the questions from the first phone call honestly.
What to do this week
Open your own site on a phone and read the first screen through the eyes of the woman with the envelope from the start of this article. Can she tell in three seconds what kind of matters you take and in which town? Is there a number next to the consultation? Can she call you with one tap? If any answer is no, you have a list of changes for a single evening, and the rest, meaning separate pages for each type of case, can be added calmly, one at a time.