Law firm website checklist: content, advertising rules, speed and intake

What should a law firm website checklist cover?

A law firm website checklist should cover content, advertising rules, technical basics and intake, and give each area an owner. Each area can fail quietly: a practice area page nobody has read in three years, a “specialist” claim that should not be there, or an enquiry form that invites confidential detail before a conflict check.

Does each practice area page answer the client’s first questions?

It should, because a prospective client arrives with a specific problem and needs to see quickly that the firm handles it. Each practice area page needs a plain answer at the top, then the practical details a client needs before calling.

1. One page per practice area, opening with a 40–60 word answer: what the firm does in this area, for whom and where.
2. The first meeting explained: who the client will meet, what to bring, how long it takes and whether it is charged.
3. How fees work: fixed fees, estimates or hourly rates, and how the firm explains costs before work starts.
4. The process in steps, with typical timeframes given as ranges.
5. Lawyer profiles with name, photo, role, practice areas and admission details.
6. Guides with a named author and a “last reviewed” date.
7. The suburbs, regions and courts the firm serves.

For example, picture a 12-lawyer firm in Parramatta whose family law page lists “divorce, property, parenting”. A stronger opening reads: “We act for separating couples in Western Sydney on property settlements and parenting arrangements, from first advice to consent orders or proceedings in the Federal Circuit and Family Court.” That sentence tells a reader, and an answer engine, who the firm acts for, on what and where.

Which advertising rules apply to a law firm website?

The conduct rules on advertising apply to a website as they do to any other marketing, and some states add legislation for particular work, most notably personal injury in Queensland. The rules differ by state, so check each state where the firm practises and where its advertising is aimed.

Rule 36: not false, misleading, offensive or prohibited

In the Uniform Law states (New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia, per the Legal Services Council), rule 36.1 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules 2015 requires a solicitor or principal to ensure that advertising, marketing or promotion is not false, misleading or deceptive or likely to mislead or deceive, offensive, or prohibited by law. Rule 36.2 bars conveying a false, misleading or deceptive impression of specialist expertise, and bars using the words “accredited specialist” or derivatives, including post-nominals, unless the solicitor is accredited by the relevant professional association (Law Society of NSW).

On the website, check “specialist” and “expert” wording in page titles, meta descriptions, lawyer profiles and any copy drafted with AI tools. Check that results and testimonials are true and cannot mislead. Other states and territories have their own versions of the conduct rules, so confirm which apply where you practise.

Queensland: personal injury advertising

Queensland restricts how anyone advertises personal injury services, and the restriction reaches websites. Under the Personal Injuries Proceedings Act 2002, chapter 3, part 1:

In practice, review every Queensland personal injury page line by line against section 66. Testimonials, results, “start your claim” prompts and anything beyond those two permitted topics need specific legal review. The website allowance covers the firm’s own website only; search ads and social posts are assessed under the general restriction and section 65.

New South Wales: no separate personal injury ban under the Uniform Law

The Law Society of NSW notes that the Uniform Law does not include the prohibition on advertising personal injury legal services that existed in the repealed Legal Profession Regulation 2005, and that the Workers Compensation Regulation 2016 does not include the work injury advertising prohibition in the repealed 2010 regulation. Rule 36 still applies. If an agency template or an older guide describes a NSW ban, check it against current law before relying on it.

Is the site fast, accessible and readable by search and AI engines?

It should meet Google’s “good” Core Web Vitals thresholds, WCAG 2.2 level AA, and the basic access rules for search and AI crawlers. None of these is legal work, but each affects whether a client can use the site and whether engines can read it.

• Speed. Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, at the 75th percentile of page loads on mobile and desktop (web.dev).
• Content in the HTML. Core text should be in the page as served, not injected later by JavaScript. Vercel’s December 2024 analysis found the major AI crawlers it studied, apart from Google’s and Apple’s, did not run scripts.
• Accessibility. WCAG 2.2 AA includes tap targets of at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, focus that sticky headers do not hide, portal logins that do not depend on memory tests, and intake forms that do not ask for the same details twice.
• Structured data. Organisation markup, LegalService markup (schema.org describes it as a business providing legal services, advice and representation, such as a law firm) and article markup with author names and dates. Our glossary defines structured data in plain English. Google no longer shows FAQ rich results, so FAQ markup earns no extra space.
• Crawler access. robots.txt and CDN settings let OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot in; staging sites sit behind a password, because robots.txt does not keep pages out of Google.

Our guide to how firms get recommended by ChatGPT and Google AI covers the crawler rules in full.

Is the enquiry path safe for confidential information?

It is safe when a person can enquire easily without being invited to send confidential detail before the firm has checked for conflicts and agreed to act. The form, the notice beside it and the follow-up all matter.

1. Ask for name, contact details, matter type, the other party’s name for the conflict check, and a short description.
2. Tell enquirers not to send confidential details or documents until the firm confirms it can act.
3. Say clearly that an enquiry does not by itself make the person a client.
4. Place a privacy notice beside the form that names the law practice entity.
5. State the response time, and give an after-hours route.

Enquiries that arrive after hours can otherwise wait until the next business day. The Client Intake Agent, by Pylon Digital, qualifies website and email enquiries, collects details, runs conflict-check prompts and books meetings, with a lawyer approving anything before it leaves the firm.

What is the full law firm website checklist?

Use this list before a rebuild, before launch and once a year. Tick an item only when the named owner has checked it on the live site.

Pylon Digital builds websites, including for law firms, with the technical and intake items in place from launch, and works through the content and advertising items with the responsible partner. Our page for law firms covers what else we build for practices.

This is general information, not legal advice.