What the site is for
Two jobs. It is the thing Google matches against the seven organic web spots on page one that are not directories (two of nine were directories in every one of the 14 towns we checked in October 2026). And it is the thing a person reads after the referral: 74% of people who were referred to a lawyer still looked the firm up online before calling, in Scorpion's 2025 survey of 3,000 adults. The person is checking that the firm is real, that it handles their kind of case, that it is in their town, and how to reach it. The site has to answer those four things on a phone in under a minute.
Nine in ten firms that answered the ABA's 2024 survey had a website; among solo practitioners it was seven in ten, up from 61% two years earlier. Having one is not the question. Whether it does the two jobs is.
The pages
Home. The firm's name, what it does, where it is, and how to call, in the first screen. The responsible lawyer's name and the office location, which the advertising rules require (below). A short paragraph in plain English about who the firm is, and links to the practice area pages. No slider, no stock gavel, no "Welcome to our website".
One page per case type. Truck accidents, car accidents, wrongful death, divorce, custody, wills and probate, DWI: whatever the firm wants more of, one page each, 900 to 1,400 words, written around the questions clients ask in the first meeting. This is the gap the titles in our October snapshot point at. The firm pages that ranked in that snapshot of 14 towns carried the case type and the town in their titles. A single "Practice Areas" page with a paragraph on each does not match a search for one of them.
A page for each town the firm serves, written as the location pages guide describes: the courthouse, the drive, the real office, never an implied office.
Attorneys, one page each (next section). Contact, with the address, a map, hours and a phone link that works. About, if the firm has something to say beyond the bios. A results page only if the firm's attorneys decide the state's disclosure rules make one worth having. A blog only if someone will write it; an abandoned blog with three posts from 2019 says more than no blog.
The attorney pages
Google's guidance on helpful content asks whether it is self-evident who wrote a page and whether the author has first-hand expertise. For a law firm the bios are where that lives, and they are also a search result in their own right: a person given a lawyer's name by a friend searches the name. Each bio needs the lawyer's full name and the form the state allows for credentials (Texas: "Board Certified, Personal Injury Trial Law, Texas Board of Legal Specialization", nothing shorter; Florida: certification only under Rule 4-7.14(a)(4), naming the area and the certifier), bar admissions and the year, the courts the lawyer practices in, the kinds of cases, a photograph of the actual lawyer, and a direct way to reach them.
As text, so Google can read it. In the fictional memo on this site the bios were images of text and Google had not indexed them. It happens on real sites more than you would think.
Disclosures, by state
A website is advertising under the rules we have read (Texas, Florida, New York and the ABA model), even where it is exempt from filing. Your attorneys rule on what applies; this is what the rules we have read require, so the drafts arrive right.
Texas. A law firm's website is exempt from the filing requirement except for its homepage (Rule 7.05); the homepage must be filed with the Advertising Review Committee within ten days of going live, with the $100 fee, unless it qualifies as a tombstone communication limited to names, contact details, practice areas, bar admissions and Board Certification (Rule 7.04, 7.05). Every page is still bound by 7.01 and 7.02: name a lawyer responsible for the content and state the primary practice location; a contingent-fee statement must say whether the client owes expenses; "Board Certified" only in the prescribed form; a past result that was reduced, reversed, never collected or settled for less must disclose the amount actually received with equal or greater prominence (Rule 7.01 Comment 10, as amended January 31, 2022). Comment 3 treats a dramatization with actors as misleading unless the disclaimer is conspicuous.
Florida. Websites are exempt from filing under Rule 4-7.20(g), and bound by 4-7.12 to 4-7.17 and 4-7.21. Every page names at least one responsible lawyer or the firm and the city, town or county of a bona fide office (4-7.12). Testimonials need the disclaimer that the prospective client may not obtain the same or similar results, and may not be drafted by the lawyer or given for anything of value (4-7.13(b)(9)). Past results only if objectively verifiable, with the client's informed consent (4-7.13(b)(2)). "Specialist" and "expert" only for certified lawyers (4-7.14). The Bar's filing fee for the ads that do require filing rose to $250 timely and $750 late on July 1, 2026, with online submission; a firm that runs ads alongside the site should know that.
New York. The Appellate Divisions replaced Rule 7.1 effective June 1, 2026. The "Attorney Advertising" label and the three-year retention requirement are gone, as is Rule 7.4 and the separate blackout on injury solicitations; what remains is the ban on false or misleading communications, "certified specialist" only for approved certifiers named in the ad, and the requirement that every communication include the name and contact information of a responsible lawyer or firm. Testimonials require the person's permission to use their name, image or likeness. A New York firm whose site still carries "Attorney Advertising" in the footer is not wrong, but it is dated.
Everywhere. Model Rule 7.1's bar on misleading statements, including true statements that omit a necessary fact, which is why "Tessamer's top injury firm" comes off every draft, and why a page about a neighboring town says where the office actually is.
Intake: the phone, the form and the price
Clio's 2024 secret-shopper study of 500 firms: 40% answered the phone, 33% answered email, 30% of shoppers could tell from the website how to hire the firm, 14% could find pricing. AttorneySync's 2026 observed shoppers preferred a phone call as first contact by 66% to 13% for email and 5% for a web form, and 40% left immediately after no response. Scorpion's 72% move on within 24 hours.
So: the phone number as a tappable link on every page ("tel:" in the link, which the fictional memo's site was missing), the hours beside it, and a sentence saying what happens when you call. A short form for people who will not call, with a stated reply time the firm keeps. For flat-fee practice areas, the price or a range; 59% of firms used flat fees exclusively or alongside hourly in 2024 (Clio 2025 Legal Trends Report), and a firm that says "uncontested divorce from $1,500" is telling the 86% of shoppers who could not find a price the one thing they wanted. For contingent fees, the percentage and whether expenses are extra, which Texas requires in any ad that mentions the fee. And online payments: firms that took them were paid in a median 6 days against 14 (Clio 2024 solo and small firm report).
One more line for 2026. Clio's 2025 survey of 1,000 adults found 78% want lawyers to disclose when they use AI and 36% would trust a lawyer less for using it. If the firm uses AI tools in client work, a plain sentence about how, on the About page, is better than being asked.
The technical floor
Speed on a phone. Google's threshold for a good Largest Contentful Paint is 2.5 seconds or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads. A common cause is photographs uploaded at camera size, and compressing them can be most of the fix. Test with Google's PageSpeed Insights on the home page and one practice area page.
Reachability. Google has to be able to index the pages that matter. Check Search Console's page indexing report for pages marked "Crawled, currently not indexed" and "Discovered, currently not indexed"; bios and practice area pages show up there when they are thin, duplicated or blocked. Fix the page, then request indexing.
Layout on a phone. Text readable without zooming, buttons large enough to tap, no horizontal scrolling, the phone number above the fold.
Links. A broken link checker once a month. Broken phone links, broken links to old practice area pages, a "Results" link to a page the firm deleted.
The certificate. HTTPS, with a certificate that renews before it expires. A browser warning on a law firm's site ends the visit.
One site. One canonical address per page: no second domain for personal injury, and no "www" and bare domain both serving the site.
Markup Google reads
Structured data tells Google what a page is without changing anything a reader sees. Schema.org's LegalService type describes a business that provides legally oriented services, advice and representation; it goes on the home page with the firm's name, address, phone, hours and the URL of the Business Profile. Each attorney page carries the Attorney type with the lawyer's name, the firm, and the areas of practice. Practice area pages describe the service. None of this is a ranking factor Google has promised; it is the plain-language label on the box, and it is cheap.
What it can do without
A chat widget that promises instant answers and routes to an inbox nobody reads. A sliding banner. Stock photographs of gavels, scales, columns and handshakes. A "testimonials" slider with first names and no consent file (Florida's 4-7.13 and New York's permission rule both bite). A results page without the disclosures. A blog that will not be written. "Specialist" anywhere the lawyer is not certified. Any claim with "best", "top" or "leading" in it. A page for an office the firm does not have. An "Attorney Advertising" label in New York after June 1, 2026 is harmless, so leave it or remove it as the attorneys prefer; the rest of this list is not harmless.
And a redesign, in most cases. A slow, dated site with the right pages, the right disclosures and a phone link that works can rank and can pass a bar review. A new site built around a single "Practice Areas" page cannot. Fix the list above on the site you have; rebuild only if the platform cannot be fixed, which is rarer than the people selling rebuilds say.
What to do in the next hour
The six-point read
- Open the site on a phone and tap the phone number. If it does not dial, that is the first fix.
- Count the practice area pages against the list of cases the firm wants. Every missing one is a page to write.
- Find the responsible lawyer's name and the office location on the home page. If either is missing, add both to the footer.
- Search for "best", "top", "specialist", "expert" and "guarantee" across the site. Give the list to an attorney.
- Run PageSpeed Insights on the home page; note the Largest Contentful Paint figure and the size of the largest image.
- Check the certificate's expiry date in the browser's padlock.
These six are a page of the memo's website findings. The rest, including indexing and the five-year trend, needs tools; the free check covers them.
Sources
- The Law Firm SEO Agency, live search snapshot, 14 towns, October 21 and 22, 2026: research page.
- Scorpion, 2025 Legal Consumer Trends Report (3,000 US adults), September 10, 2025: scorpion.co.
- ABA 2024 Websites and Marketing TechReport: americanbar.org.
- Google Search Central, Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content, updated October 5, 2026: developers.google.com.
- Texas Center for Legal Ethics, Rules 7.01, 7.02, 7.04 and 7.05: 7.01, 7.02, 7.04, 7.05; Supreme Court of Texas order of January 31, 2022 (Comment 10): txcourts.gov; State Bar of Texas Advertising Review ($100 fee): texasbar.com.
- The Florida Bar, Advertising filing requirements (websites exempt, 4-7.20(g)), modified July 14, 2026: floridabar.org; fees from July 1, 2026: floridabar.org; Rules 4-7.12, 4-7.13 and 4-7.14 as reproduced by the Florida Justice Association: 4-7.12, 4-7.13, 4-7.14.
- Joint Order of the New York Appellate Divisions amending Part 1200 (Rule 7.1, effective June 1, 2026): nycourts.gov; NYSBA explainer, September 8, 2026: nysba.org.
- ABA Model Rule 7.1: americanbar.org.
- Clio, Client intake: Legal Trends (2024 secret-shopper study of 500 firms): clio.com; Clio, Highlights from the 2024 Legal Trends for Solo and Small Law Firms Report (online payments 6 vs 14 days), June 18, 2024: clio.com; 2025 Legal Trends Report (flat fees 59%, AI disclosure 78%), summarized by 2Civility, October 29, 2025: 2civility.org.
- AttorneySync, 2026 Legal Service Consumer Choice Report: attorneysync.com.
- web.dev (Google), Largest Contentful Paint (2.5 seconds, 75th percentile): web.dev.
- Schema.org, LegalService: schema.org.