Short answer: A legal web designer builds websites for law firms specifically — which means the site has to satisfy your state bar’s advertising rules as well as look good and generate consultations. We build on WordPress, you own everything, and a complete five-page firm site starts at $997.

Most agencies that say they build law firm websites build ordinary business websites and change the stock photography. That is usually fine until a state bar disciplinary counsel reads the homepage, or until a firm realises the testimonial slider it paid for is prohibited in its jurisdiction.

This page sets out exactly what we build, what it costs, and who we are not the right fit for.

What a legal web designer does that a general web designer does not

The design work is the same craft. The constraints are not. Whether the job is advertised as a legal web designer, an attorney web designer or a law firm web design agency, the thing that separates one from an ordinary web shop is the constraint set — not the portfolio.

A general web designer optimises for conversion and stops there. Legal web designers have to optimise for conversion inside a set of rules that changes at every state line — rules about what you may claim, whose results you may publish, what you must disclose, whether a chat widget counts as solicitation, and which words a firm is not permitted to use about itself.

Three examples of what that looks like in practice:

• New York requires the words “Attorney Advertising” on the home page of a firm’s website. That is a layout decision, and it has to survive every future template change.
• Florida requires the responsible lawyer, the principal office city and state, and disclosure of the states you are licensed in if you advertise beyond them.
• Several states restrict how client results and testimonials may be presented at all — which means the results carousel that works beautifully for a contractor can be the single riskiest element on a personal injury site.

None of that is exotic. It is just knowledge a designer either has before the build or discovers afterwards, at the firm’s expense.

What is included in a build

Every site we build includes all of the following. There is no version of this where SEO or mobile behaviour is an upsell.

What you get	What that actually means
A homepage that establishes credibility fast	Who you are, what you handle, where you practise, and one obvious next step — above the fold, not three scrolls down.
A page per practice area you want cases in	Written to rank and to convert, 1,200–2,000 words each, not a paragraph and a stock photo. These are the pages that earn the enquiries.
Attorney biographies built for trust	Structured around verifiable experience rather than a list of credentials, and written so the certification claims stay inside your state’s rules.
Intake forms short enough to finish	Every extra field costs completions. We ask for the minimum that lets you triage the enquiry.
Technical SEO from day one	Crawlable structure, clean URLs, schema, speed and Core Web Vitals — done during the build, because retrofitting it costs more than including it.
Hosting, SSL, speed and mobile	Set up as part of the project, not billed as extras afterwards.
Full ownership	Standard WordPress, your hosting account, your domain, your content. If you fire us tomorrow the site keeps working and any developer can pick it up.

That last row is worth reading twice. A large part of this industry builds on proprietary platforms you cannot take with you, which is why “who owns the site” belongs in every conversation with a law firm web design agency before money changes hands.

The compliance layer most web designers skip

We have published advertising-rules guides for 46 states — what each state’s rules govern, which body enforces them, and the parts that most often catch firms out on their own websites. We wrote them because we needed them for client work.

You are welcome to use them whether or not you ever hire us. Start with the state-by-state overview, or read the guide for your own jurisdiction.

What we do not do is tell you your rules are satisfied. We are a marketing agency, not a law firm, and the responsibility for a firm’s compliance sits with the firm and its ethics counsel. What we do is build the site so that the decisions your bar cares about — disclosures, labels, claim wording, how results and reviews appear — are deliberate choices you signed off on, rather than defaults inherited from a template.

Pricing

Published, because “contact us for a quote” wastes everyone’s afternoon.

Package	Price	Right for
Foundation	From $997	A complete five-page site. Solo attorneys and new firms that need a credible, compliant, fast site live quickly.
Growth	From $1,997	Firms that want cases from search: a page per practice area, deeper content, and the SEO foundations to compete on them.
Custom	Quoted	Multi-attorney or multi-state firms, migrations from an existing site with real traffic, or anything with unusual intake requirements.

For the full breakdown of what law firm websites cost across the market — freelancers, agencies and the legal-vertical platforms — see our law firm website pricing guide.

How we work

1. Discovery and strategy. Your practice areas, the cases you actually want more of, your jurisdictions, and what your bar requires. This is where the compliance constraints get written down, before anything is designed.
2. Design and build. A responsive WordPress site, reviewed with you at wireframe and at build. Content written for the pages that earn cases, not filler.
3. Launch and after. Redirects, indexing, analytics and search console set up properly at launch, then ongoing updates, backups and optimisation. Sites decay when they are abandoned on launch day.

Who we are not right for

Worth saying plainly, so nobody wastes a call:

• Firms that want a site by Friday. A build that includes real practice-area content takes weeks, not days.
• Firms looking for the cheapest possible site. Below roughly $500 you are buying a template with the demo content swapped out, and there are marketplaces that do that faster than we can.
• Firms that want guaranteed rankings. Nobody can guarantee those, and an agency that does is telling you something useful about itself.
• Firms that want us to sign off on their compliance. We build to your rules; we do not replace your ethics counsel.

Questions we get asked

How do I choose a web design agency that specialises in legal practices?

Ask six questions: do they build for law firms specifically, is SEO part of the build or an upsell, what platform do they build on, will you own everything at the end, what happens after launch, and can they show you work for firms like yours. Our longer answer is in how to choose a web designer for your law firm — written to be useful even if you hire somebody else.

Are there web designers who understand attorney advertising rules?

Yes, though fewer than you would hope. The test is whether they can tell you what your state requires before you tell them — and whether they raise it during design rather than after launch. We have published guides to the advertising rules in 46 states, which is the most direct way we know to show the work rather than claim it.

Do attorney website designers include SEO?

Some do, many do not, and a few include a checkbox version of it. Ours is included: site structure, schema, speed, and practice-area pages written to rank are part of every build. Ask any agency to be specific about which of those three things they mean, because “SEO included” covers all of them.

How much does a law firm website cost?

Across the market, roughly $500 to $1,500 for a template build, $1,500 to $3,500 for a standard site that is genuinely trying to rank, and upward from there for multi-attorney firms. Ours start at $997. The pricing guide breaks down what each tier does and does not include.

Do I own the website?

Yes — the site, the domain, the hosting account and the content. We build on standard WordPress with no proprietary lock-in, so if you decide to move the site to another developer, you can, and nothing has to be rebuilt.

Talk to us

Tell us where your firm is now and what you want the site to do, and we will tell you honestly what is worth doing first — including when the answer is “not a rebuild”. Email hello@legalwebagency.com or use the contact form.

Legal Web Agency is a marketing and web design agency, not a law firm. Nothing on this page is legal or ethics advice. Advertising rules vary by state and change; confirm your obligations with your state bar or your ethics counsel.