Website Design for Law Firms

What should a law firm website include?

A law firm website needs five things: a page for every practice area and the main matter types within it, lawyer profiles that let clients verify who they’ll deal with, copy that complies with the conduct rules, an intake path suited to each kind of matter, and a fast, accessible build. Design matters, but these five decide whether the site brings in work.

Lawyers’ websites have a harder job than most. Visitors are often stressed, comparing several firms, and reading on a phone. Someone whose partner has just left wants to know what happens to the house. Someone charged with drink driving wants to know whether they’ll lose their licence and whether anyone will answer tonight. A site that answers those questions plainly and makes the next step easy wins the enquiry.

It also has to rank. That’s why structure comes before visual design: Google ranks pages, not firms, so each matter type you want work in needs its own page. For the ranking work that follows launch, see our law firm SEO page.

How should practice-area pages be structured?

Build a hub page for each practice area, then a separate page for each matter type people actually search, linked from the hub. A single ‘Our Services’ page listing every area rarely ranks for any of them, and a family law page that tries to cover divorce, property and parenting in 300 words answers none of them well.

Level	Example	What the page does
Practice-area hub	/family-law/	Overview of the work, who you act for, how fees work, links to each matter page
Matter page	/family-law/property-settlement/	Process, timeframes, cost factors and common questions for one matter type
Urgent matter page	/criminal-law/drink-driving/	Penalties overview, first steps, court process and an after-hours number above the fold
Office or location page	/offices/parramatta/	Only where you have a real office: address, hours, parking, lawyers based there
Fees page	/fees/	How you charge, fixed-fee items, what’s included and what costs extra
Lawyer profile	/team/jane-smith/	Admission, practice areas, accreditation held, matters she handles

Search demand shows why matter pages matter. Google’s Australian data for October 2026 shows ‘family lawyer’ at around 9,900 searches a month and ‘divorce lawyer’ at 3,600, while ‘will lawyer’ gets 2,400 and ‘unfair dismissal lawyer’ 320. Each is a different question from a different person, and each deserves its own answer.

Write matter pages for the state you practise in. Courts, deadlines and terminology differ: Western Australia, for example, has its own state family court, the Family Court of Western Australia, so a family law page copied from a Sydney firm names the wrong court for a Perth reader. Only build pages for work you have capacity to take.

What should lawyer profile pages show?

A lawyer profile should show who the lawyer is, where and when they were admitted, what they practise in, any accreditation they actually hold, and how to contact them. Legal advice falls under what Google calls ‘Your Money or Your Life’ content, so pages that let readers check who stands behind the advice carry more weight with readers and search engines alike.

A profile that does this job includes:

• Name and role, written the same way everywhere online, including the lawyer’s Google Business Profile.
• Admission details: the court and year of admission.
• A link to the public register of practising lawyers in your state, so a reader can confirm practising status.
• Practice areas and matter types, linked to those pages.
• Accreditation only if held, using the accrediting body’s exact title. Rule 36.2 limits ‘accredited specialist’ and its derivatives, including post-nominals, to accredited lawyers.
• A real photo, languages spoken, and the office the lawyer works from.

Add a ‘reviewed by’ line with a date to each practice and matter page, linked to the reviewing lawyer’s profile. It tells readers the content was checked by someone admitted to practise.

Profiles also connect to Google Maps. Google’s Business Profile guidelines treat lawyers as individual practitioners: at an office with several public-facing lawyers, the firm keeps its own profile and each lawyer’s profile uses their name only. Keep names consistent between the website and those profiles.

What conduct rules apply to law firm websites?

Your website is advertising under Rule 36 of the Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules, so nothing on it can be false, misleading or deceptive, offensive or prohibited by law, and it can’t give a false impression of specialist expertise. The Australian Consumer Law applies too, and personal injury pages in Queensland and WA have their own statutory limits.

Website element	Do	Don’t
Lawyer titles	‘Practises in family law’, or the exact accreditation title for accredited lawyers	‘Specialist’ or ‘expert’ for lawyers without accreditation
Personal injury pages (Qld, WA)	Explain negligence law, a person’s rights and the conditions on which you act	Urge people to claim, or advertise ‘no win, no fee’ on Queensland injury pages
Fee pages	State what a fixed fee covers and what costs extra	Fee slogans that leave out disbursements or conditions
‘No win, no fee’	Describe the conditional costs arrangement accurately	Fees calculated as a percentage of the payout, banned by s 183 of the Uniform Law
Results and case studies	Accurate, with client consent, and not presented as typical	Identifiable client details without consent, given Rule 9 confidentiality
Testimonials	Genuine, unedited in meaning, with consent	Written, paid-for or cherry-picked reviews presented as typical
Contact forms	Make clear that submitting a form doesn’t make you their lawyer	Asking for the full story before a conflict check

Personal injury rules deserve the most care. Queensland’s Personal Injuries Proceedings Act 2002 limits injury advertising to name, contact details and area of practice (s 66), with a website carve-out for content about negligence law, rights and your service conditions (s 66(2)(b)). WA’s Civil Liability Act 2002 has a similar carve-out in s 17(2)(b), with a $10,000 penalty for a breach. In May 2026, the Queensland Law Society’s Proctor reported a QCAT public reprimand and agreed $4,000 fine for a Gold Coast injury principal over his firm’s website wording, which included ‘No win no fee’.

Fee pages don’t replace costs disclosure. In the Uniform Law states (NSW, Victoria and WA), disclosure isn’t required where total legal costs are unlikely to exceed $750, excluding GST and disbursements (s 174(4)), and the Legal Practice Board of WA notes a standard disclosure form may be used for matters likely to cost between $750 and $3,000. Above that, the engagement still needs full disclosure, however clearly the website states the fee.

Accessibility is part of compliance in practice. The Australian Human Rights Commission’s April 2025 Guidelines on equal access to digital goods and services, issued under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, treat WCAG as the applicable standard and recommend its latest version. They aren’t legally binding, but a site that can’t be used with a screen reader leaves the firm open to a complaint under the Act.

This is a plain-English summary, not legal advice.

How does a law firm website turn visitors into enquiries?

Make the next step obvious and suited to the matter. Urgent matters need a phone number at the top of every page and someone answering it, including out of hours for criminal work. Researched matters need clear answers, honest cost information and an easy way to book a first consultation.

What converts on lawyers’ websites:

• Click-to-call on mobile, visible without scrolling, on every urgent matter page.
• After-hours options for criminal and urgent family matters: an answering service or on-call number, not just a form.
• Short forms. Name, contact details, matter type and the other party’s name for a conflict check. Don’t invite people to write out the full story before you know you can act.
• Fee transparency. A fees page and cost ranges on matter pages reduce the calls from people who were never going to engage you.
• Online booking for first consultations where your practice management system supports it.
• Speed. A page that takes several seconds to load on a phone loses visitors before they read a word.

Track enquiries by practice area. Calls, forms and bookings should be recorded against the page they came from, in analytics accounts the firm owns. That’s how you find out whether the employment pages produce work and whether the injury pages are worth their Google Ads spend.

The website is one part of the client-acquisition mix. For how it works with Maps, Google Ads, referrals and reviews, see our marketing for law firms page.

How much does a law firm website cost in Australia?

Typical Australian market ranges run from about $2,000–$5,000 for a template-based small firm site to $5,000–$15,000 for a custom small firm site, and $15,000–$30,000+ for a multi-practice firm with integrations. The biggest cost drivers are the number of practice and matter pages, who writes them, and integrations such as booking or practice management.

Type of site	Typical Australian market range
DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace)	$600–$1,000 setup, plus subscription and your time
Template-based site, 5–10 pages, sole practitioner	$2,000–$5,000
Custom small firm site with practice and matter pages	$5,000–$15,000
Custom multi-practice firm, many matter pages and integrations	$15,000–$30,000+
Hosting, security and maintenance	Often from around $100 a month

These ranges are compiled from Australian agencies’ published pricing guides and vary widely between providers. They’re market ranges, not our quote. Ask any provider three questions: how many pages are included, who writes the content, and whether old URLs will be redirected so existing rankings aren’t lost.

Content is where cheap sites fall short. A template with ten pages of generic copy costs little but rarely ranks or converts. Dyllan builds SEO-ready lead-gen websites, written page by page for the matters a firm wants. For ongoing costs after launch, see our SEO pricing guide. Work is month-to-month, with no lock-in.

Want to know whether your current site is costing you enquiries, or carries any conduct-rule risk? Get a free law firm website audit.