Practice-area architecture
One real page per area you actually practice, separated so they target different terms. This is the single most common fault we find and the one with the largest upside when it is corrected.
01 Website design · Nationwide
A firm site that can be found and answers the question
Most law firm websites fail at one of two jobs. Either a search engine cannot understand what the firm does, or a person arrives, cannot tell whether this firm handles their situation, and leaves. Both are structural problems, and both are fixed at build time far more cheaply than afterwards.
Since 200915,000+ clientsEvery link verified
02
At a glance
- From
- $400 one time
- Ownership
- Yours, permanently
- Built for
- Indexing and consultations
- Practice pages
- One per area, no duplicates
- Mobile
- Primary, not an afterthought
- Quoted
- Separately from SEO
03
What this costs
Website design is quoted separately from the SEO programs below, one time, from $400. The programs are what runs monthly. A site with nothing pointing at it will not rank, and links pointing at a site that cannot be crawled are wasted, which is why most firms buy both.
| Program | Basic | Silver | Golden | Platinum BEST VALUE | Titanium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $65 | $125 | $235 | $325 | $575 |
| One time | $75 | $140 | $260 | $380 | $620 |
| Domains | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Keywords | 5 | 10 | 20 | 40 | 100 |
| Guest posts, DA 20+ | 5 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 50 |
| Web 2.0s, DA 50+ | 5 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 50 |
| Amplification links | 1,500 | 3,000 | 5,000 | 10,000 | 20,000 |
| Keyword research | Standard | Standard | In-depth | In-depth | In-depth |
| Premium indexing | · | · | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| On-page technical audit | · | · | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Content gap analysis | · | · | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Competitor traffic spy | · | · | · | Yes | Yes |
| Toxic link check, disavow | · | · | · | · | Yes |
| Turnaround | 8-10 days | 10-12 days | 12-14 days | 14-16 days | 16-18 days |
04
What law firm website design costs, honestly
Nobody publishes real numbers for this, so firms shopping for a site have no reference point and end up comparing a $600 quote against a $26,000 one with no way to explain the gap. Here is what the gap actually is.
At the bottom of the market you are buying a template with your name applied. It will look acceptable, it will be slow, its practice-area pages will be near-duplicates of one another, and it will usually live on a platform you rent. It is not a waste of money for a brand new solo practice. It is a poor foundation for anything else.
In the middle, from roughly four to twelve thousand, you are buying structure: a real information architecture, pages written for your practice areas, and a build that a crawler can read. This is where the return on the spend is highest for most firms.
Above that you are buying custom design, original photography, bespoke intake integration and, frequently, the studio's reputation. Those things can be worth it for a firm competing on brand at the top of a major market. For a six-attorney practice they usually are not.
Ours starts at $400 because the structural work is the part that matters and we would rather firms spend the difference on the program that actually builds authority. The number goes up with page count, with how much content we write, and with intake integration. It is quoted before you commit, not discovered afterwards.
05
What the build includes
Every build covers the same structural ground. What changes between firms is scale, not which of these gets skipped.
Mobile as the primary case
Legal search skews heavily to phones, and criminal and DUI searches skew further still because of when they happen. The phone layout is designed first and the desktop layout follows from it.
Speed and crawlability
Clean markup, compressed images, no render-blocking weight, and a structure a crawler can traverse without hitting dead ends. Slow sites lose people who searched at two in the morning.
Structured data
Organization, service and FAQ markup in place from the build rather than retrofitted, so your pages are legible to search engines and to the AI assistants people increasingly ask legal questions of.
Consultation paths
A clear route from any page to making contact, on a phone, without hunting. Most firm sites bury this below content that a person in the middle of a problem will not read.
Disclaimer handling
Structure that accommodates the disclaimers your state requires around results and testimonials, positioned where they belong rather than added later in a footer nobody reads.
Modeled scenario
What a rebuild looks like for a six-attorney general practice
- Existing site
- Indexed, holding some positions
- Practice pages before
- 6, largely duplicated
- Practice pages after
- 6, genuinely separated
- URLs preserved
- Yes, with redirects verified
- Website
- $400 one time, quoted separately
- Program alongside
- Platinum, $325 a month
The reason to preserve URLs rather than start fresh is that authority accrues to addresses. A firm that replaces its site and changes every URL without redirects can lose years of accumulated position in a week, and recovering it costs more than the rebuild did.
Illustrative scenarios modeled from the figures shown. Not client results and not a projection.
06
Design as an indexing problem
A law firm website has two audiences and they want opposite things. A search engine wants unambiguous structure: what this firm does, where, and which page is authoritative for which topic. A person in the middle of a problem wants one answer, quickly, on a phone.
Design that serves only the second produces a beautiful site that cannot be found. Design that serves only the first produces a page stuffed with terms that no person will read past. The build has to satisfy both, and the way it does is structural rather than decorative.
Structure means one page per genuine service, internally linked so the relationship between them is explicit, with the technical signals set correctly from the start. Get that right and the visual design is free to be restrained, which is what this audience responds to anyway.
It also means being honest about what a site alone can do. A well-built site with nothing referencing it will not rank in a market this competitive. The build is the foundation. The program is what compounds on it.
07
The four failures we see most
These four faults account for most of the underperformance we find, and all four are cheaper to fix at build time than at any point afterwards.
- 01
Practice-area pages that compete with each other
Six pages built from one template with the practice name swapped are, to a search engine, six candidates for the same query. It picks one, usually not the one you would choose, and the others contribute nothing. Separating them properly is often the largest single on-site gain available to a firm.
- 02
Nothing that answers the situational question
People search their circumstance for weeks before they search for a lawyer. A site with nothing but service pages has nothing to offer that traffic, which means the cheapest and earliest audience in the market never sees the firm at all.
- 03
A phone experience that was designed second
Legal search skews to mobile, and the urgent categories skew hardest. A site that is usable on a laptop and awkward on a phone is failing at the moment it matters, which is frequently late at night with one hand.
- 04
A rebuild that discarded the old URLs
Authority attaches to addresses. Replacing a site and changing every URL without redirects surrenders position that took years to accumulate. We check what the current site is holding before proposing to replace any of it.
We are a marketing agency. We are not a law firm, we do not employ lawyers, and we do not provide legal or ethics advice. Requirements for disclaimers and advertising copy vary by state and change, so your firm reviews the finished site against your bar's current guidance.
08
How the work runs
Five steps, every month, in this order. Nothing is built on top of a site that cannot be crawled, and nothing is reported that you cannot open and check yourself.
01 What exists now
Whether the current site holds positions worth preserving.
02 Structure
Practice-area architecture agreed before a single page is designed.
03 Build
Mobile first, fast, crawlable, with schema in place from the start.
04 Content and review
Copy delivered to your firm for sign off before anything is published.
05 Launch and monitor
Redirects verified, indexing watched, positions tracked through the change.
09
Questions
What does law firm website design cost?
Ours starts at $400, one time, quoted per firm. The wider market runs from a few hundred dollars for a template to well past twenty thousand for a custom build from a legal-specialist studio. What actually moves the number is page count, whether content is written for you, and how much integration the intake process needs.
Do we own the site?
Yes, completely and permanently. The site, the content, the images and the domain are yours. There is no license that lapses if you stop working with us, and nothing is held hostage. This is worth checking with any vendor, because proprietary platforms that you rent rather than own are common in legal marketing.
Can you redesign our existing site instead of replacing it?
Often yes, and often it is the better option. If the current site is indexed and holding positions, replacing it wholesale risks throwing away authority that took years to build. A redesign that preserves URLs and structure while fixing what is broken is usually cheaper and lower risk.
Will the site be built for the practice areas we actually run?
Yes. One genuine page per practice area, structured so those pages do not compete with each other for the same term. Firms frequently arrive with six near-identical pages that split their own authority; separating them properly is often the single largest on-site gain available.
Does the site handle bar advertising requirements?
The build accommodates them: disclaimer placement, results and testimonial handling, and a structure that keeps required text where it needs to sit. What the specific requirements are varies by state and changes, so your firm reviews the finished copy against your bar current guidance before anything goes live.
How fast does a new site rank?
A new site on a new domain starts from nothing and takes longer than most people expect, typically several months before meaningful movement. A rebuild on an established domain that preserves URLs can hold its positions through the transition. That difference is the main reason we ask what exists before quoting.
10
What makes this different
01
Every link arrives as a live URL
Not a count, not a screenshot, not a summary of work performed. A list you can open in a browser and check in under a minute. The assets stay yours permanently.
02
We refuse to promise the head terms
We target them. We will not put a date on them, and we will tell you which of the terms you asked about are not worth starting with. That conversation happens before you pay, not after.
03
Nothing is published without your sign off
Everything written for your firm is delivered for review first. Bar advertising rules vary by state and change, and your firm is the one accountable for what appears under its name.
04
Month to month, setup waived
No contract term, no cancellation window, no setup fee on any plan. If the reporting stops being worth reading you can stop, which is the only real accountability an agency can offer.
05
Seventeen years and a dedicated manager
Operating since 2009 with more than 15,000 clients served and 94 percent client retention. Every plan, including the smallest, has one named account manager rather than a shared queue.
11
Related services
- 01 Law firm SEO The full program. Keyword strategy built on your practice areas, on-page work, authority building, and monthly reporting with every link listed as a live URL.
- 02 Local SEO Most legal search is jurisdictional. Profile work, citation consistency across the legal directories, and the location terms that put your office in the map results.
- 03 Technical SEO Crawl and index review, site speed, structured data, and the practice-area architecture that stops your own pages competing with each other.
- 04 Content Situational content that reaches people weeks before they search for a lawyer. Written by LavishContent, our sister brand, and delivered to your firm for review before anything is published.
- 05 Link building Guest placements on DA 20+ sites and Web 2.0 properties at DA 50+. Every link is delivered with a live, clickable URL, and the assets stay yours permanently.
13 Start
A free analysis of what your firm can win
Five questions about your practice areas, your firm size and where you are losing to the directories. You get back the terms we would target first, with difficulty and volume attached, and an honest read on how long each one takes. No obligation and no call required.