Creating a Lawyer Website: 3 Essential Design Principles

TL;DR

Lawyer website design should focus on trust, easy navigation, and multiple contact options because these factors have a direct impact on whether potential clients engage with a law firm online.

• Law firm websites should make key pages easy to find through simple navigation, shallow menu structures, and consistent access to important sections
• Original photos, professional visuals, videos, and local imagery help establish credibility and make a law firm appear more trustworthy
• Phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, contact forms, live chat, and social media links should be easy to access throughout the website
• Page builders and CMS platforms can be suitable for simpler law firm websites, while complex requirements often need professional design and development support
• Website performance, functionality, visual presentation, and user experience all influence how potential clients perceive a legal practice

These days, no one argues the importance of online presence for every type of business. Whether it’s a real estate agency or a financial or insurance company, most consumers begin searching for professional services on the Internet before dialing a phone number or driving to the office.

Legal businesses are no exception. A website is extremely important for every law firm, large or small. It serves as the first point of contact for your prospective clients and can become a powerful marketing medium to put your business in the spotlight.

A website is particularly valuable for small-time attorneys, who don’t have lavish resources to put up a decent fight with legal behemoths. It allows them to draw more organic traffic without having to splash out money on paid advertising.

Once you realize how vital it is to build a website for a lawyer, there are two common ways to approach this task.

The Main Options for Creating a Lawyer Website

Lawyer Website Development Option #1: Use a CMS/Page Builder to Create a Site Yourself

Know something about web development? Then, leverage the power of a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress or a page builder such as Squarespace. They considerably facilitate the process of building a lawyer website for those who have never done it before.

With WordPress, you can use tons of free and commercial themes crafted specifically for law firms. Here are some examples. Just pick one and tweak it to match your brand. You can also add appropriate plugins to make your website more functional. For instance, you can integrate Google Analytics to learn about your visitors’ on-site behavior and preferences.

Using a CMS or page builder to create a lawyer website with no help from outside is a convenient and cheap method. That being said, it does have some serious drawbacks:

• Many websites built this way look very much alike, with the same architectural blocks and identical styles. In order to give them a more unique appearance, assistance by professional WordPress developers and designers  is required. This will allow you to differentiate your practice from others — a critical factor in the fiercely competitive legal business sector.
• You can normally create only a simple lawyer website with page builders. If you need a more sophisticated one-of-a-kind feature, or if your site is content-heavy and has a complicated structure, you’d better choose the method below.
• You need to be well-versed in setting up and managing WordPress. Lots of things can go wrong, from performance to security. If you can’t handle them yourself, you may lose visitors, and your business may suffer.

The alternative method is to entrust the entire building process to expert WordPress developers.

Lawyer Website Development Option #2: Use the Expertise of Professional Designers and Engineers

Depending on your business needs and plans, building a lawyer website by professionals from the ground up can be more or less expensive. It certainly costs more than the previous approach does. The benefits it brings you in the end, though, are well worth your money and time.

• You get a unique website built by following the best UX and UI design practices. Your prospects or clients will enjoy navigating through your site and stay longer on it. More organic traffic, better search engine visibility.
• You can have any specific feature implemented right in the core of your website instead of relying on third-party tools. The latter may not be regularly updated, leading to errors and crashes.
• Your lawyer website development team will always ensure the ideal performance of your resource. No one wants to wait for a page to load. This is one of the most common causes of high bounce rates.

The GetDevDone developers have successfully built a large number of websites for law firms of various sizes and complexity throughout 16+ years of the company’s history. If you decide to go down the custom path, too, we’re always happy to share our unrivaled expertise with you.

No matter the method you ultimately choose to build a website for your law firm, there are certain design considerations you can’t ignore. Let’s take a look at these next.

Key Design Principles to Follow When Building a Lawyer Website

Let Your Visitors Move around Your Website Easily

Have you ever been in a large building with lots of offices and corridors? Suppose you’re looking for the office of a specific law firm without knowing its exact location inside the building. There’s no directory on the ground floor to tell you how you can find the office, so you have to walk from floor to floor scanning doorplates.

Doesn’t seem a convenient method to find what you need, right? The same goes for a lawyer website. If your navigation is confusing and hard-to-follow, this will annoy your visitors, and they will leave your site once and for all.

There are several important rules to follow as far as website navigation is concerned:

• Your menus should be as “shallow” as possible. There should be just several submenus for one main navigation item. Ideally, your main navbar should only comprise links to the most important pages on your site, such as the Practice Areas page, Attorney Profiles page, Cases page, and others.
• The main navigation bar should be present on every page of your law firm website. This will allow visitors to switch from one page to another at any time.
• You can also consider including a local search box in the main navigation bar. This might be a good idea if your law firm provides multiple services and employs a large number of attorneys.

Easy-to-navigate lawyer websites are not only great from a UX perspective. The likes of Bing also rank them high. This is because robots can index the content on such sites effortlessly.

If you find it hard to come up with the optimal layout and navigation when building your lawyer website, our expert UX designers are always ready to assist you with this task.

Take the Visual Representation of Your Legal Business Very Seriously

Your law firm website can have the best navigation, layout, and content in the world, but if you neglect the visual representation of your law firm, don’t expect much value from your online resource.

The main goal of building your lawyer website is to convince your prospective clients that they can trust you implicitly. You can write thousands of words trying to prove that, but they won’t be even remotely as effective as one perfectly shot photo of your team or an engaging video where you talk about your successfully resolved cases.

A law firm website can’t do without great visuals. Here’s what you need to know regarding this aspect of lawyer website development:

• Use original, high-quality photos. When your visitors see real people in a real business setting, it instills higher confidence in their skills and competence. Alas, the best way to approach this task is to hire a professional photographer. It may cost you a pretty penny, but the end result should justify these expenses.
• Use images from online photo banks sparingly. There are lots of photos readily available on the Internet. You can either purchase them on premium sites or download them without paying a cent from sites like this. Approach these images with caution. Your prospects will instantly realize that they are not authentic. Who wants to deal with an attorney hiding behind someone else’s identity?
• Extend your visuals beyond the office walls. A photo of your team smiling from behind their desks is all good and well. However, you should also show your visitors a broader setting in which you do your legal business. Place a high-resolution, original image of the Statue of Liberty if your office is located in New York City, for example, or of the Golden Gate Bridge if you live and work in San Francisco. This will show your prospective clients that you know the local specifics and, thus, can be more helpful in solving their “home-grown” legal problems.
• Leverage the power of video when creating a lawyer website. This is a great way to get closer to your clients no matter the distance. A good video where you answer the most common questions about your practice or explain to your clients why your law firm is the best choice is worth a hundred pages of text. You can also order a professional loop video footage of your office and place it in your website header.
• Make sure your images are optimized for use online. One downside of high-quality images is that they can significantly affect page loading speed. This is a crucial factor for any business website. That’s why you should optimize all your images for use on the Internet with various tools like this. If you find this task challenging, our developers  will be happy to help.

Let Your Prospects Connect with You in a Variety of Ways

After adding great-looking images, implementing a smooth navigation system, and writing engaging content for your website, you can expect that your prospective clients will want to establish a connection with you.

One important design principle to follow when building a website for a lawyer is to provide as many points of contact for your visitors as possible. Here are the key ones:

• Physical address, email address, and phone number prominently displayed not only in the header but also on each Attorney Profile page, Services page, Cases page, and other important pages of your website. Why? A visitor may stumble upon an important piece of information when reading about an attorney’s qualifications, realize that he or she needs this specific professional, and decide to give them a call immediately. Meet a new lead!
• A contact form. Ideally, it should be located in the upper portion of every page, normally on the right-hand side. If you place it below the fold, a visitor may not scroll down to it and leave the page. You will lose a lead. Don’t make the form mile-long. Ask visitors to provide essential contact info only, such as the name, email address, and phone number. You can obtain the rest of the details once the prospect contacts you in person.
• A live chat. This is a handy lead-capturing feature. You can answer your visitors’ questions in real time. This strengthens your reputation as a trustworthy provider of legal services who cares about your clients. If you’re creating your lawyer website based on WordPress, you can choose from among multiple plugins that serve this purpose. This  is one of the most popular.
• Social media buttons. It’s hard to imagine a modern law firm without social media accounts. Most of your prospects should have these as well. So, why not let them visit your page on Facebook or Twitter? Place social media buttons on every page of your website for easy access to your accounts.
• Call-to-action buttons. A CTA button can also serve as a contact medium. For example, clicking on the GET A CONSULTATION button can open a window with an email form or live chat. Visitors can also be taken to the Contact page, where they can provide more detailed information about themselves and their cases. When adding a CTA button to your pages, keep in mind the following:
  • There should be one call to action per page to avoid confusing your visitors.
  • A CTA button should be clearly visible among the rest of the page elements. You can achieve this by making it larger or giving it a color different from the primary page colors.
  • A call to action should be meaningful and precise. Instead of CONTACT US, for example, you could write something like GET LEGAL ADVICE NOW.

 

To Sum Up

Building a lawyer website is a wise move. It allows legal businesses to attract more clients and leads with less effort. The success or failure of a law firm website hinges upon many factors. Its proper design is one of the most crucial.

The 3 design principles we’ve discussed in this post are only some of many. We’ve just scratched the surface. Nothing can be ignored as far as a lawyer website goes.

However, first of all, you should make a favorable impression on your visitors with high-quality visuals, let them move around your website quickly, and enable them to get in touch with you in multiple ways. Then, fill the pages with engaging and informative content.

While you can use page builders to put together a simple website, turning to professional web developers for assistance will bring you more value at the end of the day. You will get a unique-looking website with excellent performance and desired functionality.

With 16+ years of commercial experience to our credit, the GetDevDone WordPress development team is always ready to help you build the best website for your law firm. Entrust your project to professionals. 

Your law firm website should build trust before the first call happens.

Website development built for stronger UX, clearer navigation, and better lead conversion.

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Lawyer Website Development FAQs

Should a law firm use a page builder or hire professional web designers and developers?

A page builder is usually enough for a small, simple lawyer website, but a professional design and development team is the safer choice when the site needs to look distinct, support custom features, or stay easy to maintain after launch.

The practical difference is not only the first build cost. Page builders can reduce the initial budget, but they often rely on similar templates, plugin combinations, and design blocks. That can be acceptable for a solo attorney who needs a basic online presence. It becomes weaker when the firm needs a stronger brand impression, multiple practice-area pages, attorney profiles, case pages, custom intake flows, analytics, SEO setup, or better performance control.

For agencies delivering legal websites for clients, the risk is usually handoff. A template site may look fine in a demo, but problems appear when the client asks for new page types, cleaner editing, form routing, tracking, or performance fixes. In that situation, working with a WordPress development partner can reduce rework because structure, QA, and maintainability are planned before launch.

When is a page-builder lawyer website good enough, and when does it become limiting?

A page-builder lawyer website is good enough when the firm needs a small brochure site with a few stable pages, simple contact options, and no unusual functionality.

It becomes limiting when the website has to support heavier content, more complex navigation, or business-specific workflows. For example, a page builder may work for a five-page site with Home, Practice Areas, About, Attorney Profile, and Contact. It is less convincing for a growing firm with many practice areas, multiple attorneys, location pages, case summaries, live chat, intake forms, CRM routing, call tracking, or a strict content approval process.

The hidden cost is not always visible at the start. The site may be cheap to launch but expensive to adjust later if every new layout depends on manual edits, fragile plugins, or workarounds. For legal websites, that matters because credibility, clarity, speed, and easy contact paths are not decorative extras. They are part of the conversion path.

What pages should be easiest to find on a law firm website?

The easiest pages to find should be the pages that help a visitor answer three questions: what legal help do you provide, who will handle my issue, and how can I contact you?

For most law firm websites, that means the main navigation should make these pages obvious:

• Practice Areas or Services
• Attorney Profiles
• About the Firm
• Cases, Results, or Representative Work, where appropriate
• Contact or Consultation page

A visitor should not have to understand the firm’s internal structure to find help. Someone looking for a divorce lawyer, immigration lawyer, personal injury lawyer, or business attorney will usually scan for their legal problem first, then check the people behind the firm, then decide whether to contact them. The navigation should follow that decision path.

How shallow should the navigation be on a lawyer website?

Lawyer website navigation should stay shallow enough that key pages are reachable in one or two clicks from almost anywhere on the site.

The main menu should not try to hold every detail. It should point to the pages that matter most: practice areas, attorney profiles, cases or results where relevant, and contact options. Deeper supporting pages can live under those sections, but they should not be buried behind several layers of dropdowns.

Large firms may need more structure because they have many attorneys, offices, services, or industries. Even then, shallow navigation is still the goal. Use grouped practice areas, clear labels, breadcrumbs, and, if needed, site search. A complicated menu can make a serious firm look harder to work with than it actually is.

What types of visuals make a lawyer website feel more trustworthy?

The most trustworthy visuals are specific to the firm: real attorneys, real office settings, local context, and restrained video content that helps visitors understand who they may be contacting.

Good visual choices include professional attorney portraits, team photos, office images, local city or neighborhood photography, and short videos explaining the firm’s approach or common client questions. These assets support credibility because they reduce uncertainty. A visitor can see the people, the setting, and the tone of the practice before making contact.

Avoid overused legal symbols as the main visual language. Gavels, scales, columns, and dramatic courtroom shots can make the site feel generic. They may still work in small doses, but they should not replace the firm’s own identity.

Where should contact forms and CTA buttons appear on a lawyer website?

Contact forms and CTA buttons should appear where the visitor is likely to make a decision, not only on a separate Contact page.

For many law firm websites, this means a clear consultation CTA in the header or hero area, contact details on attorney and practice-area pages, and a short form near the upper part of important landing pages. A second CTA can appear after a useful section, such as after practice-area details, attorney credentials, FAQs, or case examples.

The form should stay short. Name, email, phone, and a brief message are usually enough for the first step. Longer forms can create friction, especially for stressed visitors who need legal help quickly.

For agency delivery, CTA placement should be decided before development starts. If forms, chat, phone tracking, CRM routing, or email notifications are added late, the launch QA becomes more fragile.

What should an agency check before handing off a lawyer website to a legal client?

Before handoff, an agency should check whether the website works as a real lead path, not just whether the pages look finished.

A practical handoff check should cover:

• core navigation is shallow and clear
• practice-area, attorney, case, and contact pages are easy to find
• phone numbers, email links, forms, and CTA buttons work on desktop and mobile
• form submissions reach the right inbox or CRM
• analytics, conversion tracking, and call tracking are tested where included
• images are compressed, responsive, and not causing obvious slowdowns
• key pages are checked for mobile layout issues
• editable areas are documented for the client’s team
• redirects, SEO titles, meta descriptions, and indexation settings are reviewed
• backups, staging, and post-launch support responsibilities are clear

For legal clients, the agency should also separate technical QA from legal review. Developers can test forms, routing, performance, and content display. The law firm should approve legal claims, disclaimers, privacy wording, case-result language, and any jurisdiction-specific advertising requirements.