Short answer: An Arizona lawyer website redesign is often really a platform migration — moving off Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy’s builder or a proprietary agency system onto something you control. That is a different project from a redesign, with different risks, and the biggest one is that you may not own what you are moving. Arizona is also the state where firm ownership structures can differ, which makes the question of who owns the site worth settling explicitly. This guide sets out how to replatform without losing your content, your rankings or your leverage.
Before you move the website, establish that it is yours to move.
What Arizona adds to a redesign
Arizona governs lawyer advertising through Rules 7.1 through 7.5 of the Arizona Rules of Professional Conduct, administered by the State Bar of Arizona under the Arizona Supreme Court. Arizona was also the first US state to permit nonlawyer ownership of law firms through its Alternative Business Structure regime, which we cover in the Arizona attorney advertising rules guide.
That matters here for an unglamorous reason. Where ownership arrangements are more varied, the question of who actually owns the domain, the content and the data is more likely to have a non-obvious answer — and a replatform is exactly when it surfaces. It is a better question to answer before you start than during a dispute.
Establish ownership before you move anything
Five things, each of which firms routinely discover they do not control at the worst possible moment.
| Asset | Who often actually holds it | Why it matters at migration |
|---|---|---|
| The domain name | Registered to a former agency | You cannot point it anywhere |
| Content and copy | Licensed, not assigned | You may not be able to reuse it |
| Photography | Licensed for one site | Licence may not follow the rebuild |
| Tracking phone numbers | Held by a vendor | Leaving means losing the number |
| Analytics history | Agency-owned property | Baseline disappears with the account |
| Reviews and profile listings | Claimed by the vendor | Access lost on exit |
The first and last rows cause the most damage. A domain registered to an agency that has gone quiet is a genuine emergency, and a business profile listing you cannot access means you cannot correct your own address after the move. Check both this week, whether or not you are planning anything.
What a proprietary platform will not let you take
Closed platforms vary in how gracefully they let you leave. Before committing to an Arizona lawyer website redesign that involves a move, establish what you can actually export.
Page content is usually recoverable, if only by copying it out page by page. Blog archives are sometimes exportable and sometimes not. Form submission history often is not. Redirect rules configured over the years frequently cannot be exported at all, which means the redirect map you inherited from the last rebuild is invisible — and if you do not recreate it, every old URL that was already redirecting starts failing.
That last point is the one that catches people. Your current site may be quietly serving redirects from a rebuild three years ago. Crawl your live site and capture every redirect it currently issues before you switch, because that chain has to be rebuilt on the new platform or the traffic those old URLs still carry disappears.
Sequence the move so nothing overlaps badly
Build the new site on a staging domain, not on the live one. Recreate the content, the redirect map, the forms and the tracking there, and test all four properly — particularly forms, where failures are silent.
Keep the URLs identical wherever a page is surviving. A platform change is not a reason to restructure addresses, and doing both at once means that if rankings move you cannot tell which change caused it. If the structure genuinely has to change, do the replatform first and the restructure later, so the two are separable.
Move the domain last, after the new site is verified. Then, within the first day: submit the new sitemap, confirm forms deliver from outside your network, verify analytics is recording, and spot-check twenty old URLs to confirm they redirect where you intended. Within the first month, watch Search Console’s coverage report for a spike in 404s, which is the earliest reliable signal that the redirect map has a hole in it.
Arizona lawyer website redesign: frequently asked questions
Who owns a law firm’s website after an agency builds it?
It depends entirely on the contract, and firms frequently find the domain is registered to the agency, the content is licensed rather than assigned, and analytics and profile listings sit in accounts they cannot access. Establish this before commissioning any migration.
Can I move my law firm website off Wix or Squarespace?
Yes, and the constraint is what exports cleanly. Page content is usually recoverable, blog archives sometimes, form history often not, and existing redirect rules frequently not at all. Crawl and capture the current redirects before you switch.
Will changing platforms hurt my rankings?
Not inherently. Rankings move when URLs change without redirects or content gets thinner. Keep addresses identical, rebuild the redirect map including old chains, and do not restructure at the same time as replatforming.
Should I change URLs and platforms at the same time?
No. Doing both together means that if performance moves you cannot tell which change caused it. Replatform first, restructure later, so the two remain separable.
How long does an Arizona lawyer website redesign take?
Eight to sixteen weeks for a rebuild; a straight replatform with no content change can be faster. Phoenix is moderately competitive, and recovery from a mistake is quicker than in the largest coastal markets.
Arizona lawyer website redesign: the short version
If you take one thing from this guide, take this: look up your own domain registration today and confirm the firm is the registrant. Then log into your analytics and your business profile listing and confirm someone at the firm is an owner rather than a guest. Those three checks take ten minutes, they are free, and firms that skip them sometimes find out during a migration that the website is not theirs to move.
Official source: the State Bar of Arizona.
Legal Web Agency is a marketing agency, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. Nothing here states Arizona’s current requirements, and questions about contracts, ownership and business structures are for your own counsel. Confirm current requirements with the State Bar of Arizona or your ethics counsel.
Related reading: Law Firm Website Redesign: Complete 2026 Guide, plus the Arizona advertising rules guide and our guide to choosing a web designer for your law firm.
