Short answer: A Minnesota lawyer website redesign is where translated content usually gets worse rather than better. A firm serving Somali, Hmong, Spanish or Karen speaking clients has translated pages on the old site, and a rebuild either drops them, machine-translates them fresh, or carries them across while quietly leaving the disclaimers and required elements in English. The last of those is the worst outcome and the most common. This guide sets out how to handle multilingual content through a rebuild.
Translating the marketing and leaving the disclaimer in English gets the priority exactly backwards.
What Minnesota adds to a redesign
Minnesota governs lawyer advertising through Rules 7.1 through 7.5 of the Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct, with the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility handling enforcement. The point we work through in the Minnesota attorney advertising rules guide is that the rules do not stop at English — a communication in another language is still a communication about the lawyer’s services.
Minnesota is the natural place for this because of who lives there. The Twin Cities have large Somali, Hmong, Latino, Karen and Oromo communities, and firms serving them genuinely need pages in those languages — not as a gesture, but because that is how their clients read.
A rebuild is where that provision gets tested, because translated content is always handled last, by whoever is left, under launch pressure.
The three ways a rebuild breaks translated content
| What happens | Why | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Translated pages dropped | Not in the sitemap the agency used | Those clients lose the site |
| Machine-translated afresh | Faster than commissioning | Unreviewed legal claims |
| Migrated with English disclaimers | Disclaimers live in templates | Warning nobody can read |
| Language switcher rebuilt badly | New theme, new plugin | Pages exist, nobody finds them |
| Translated URLs changed | New plugin, new structure | Rankings and links lost |
The third row is the one worth dwelling on. Required elements and disclaimers usually sit in templates rather than in page content, so when the Spanish practice area page is migrated, the disclaimer beneath it comes from the English footer. The page a reader can understand is the marketing; the part warning them what the page is not is in a language they may not read. That is the exact inversion of what the requirement is for.
Decide the language architecture before the build
Two structural decisions shape everything and both are cheap now and expensive later.
How languages are organised in the URL. Subdirectories are the usual sensible answer for a single firm. Whatever you choose, if the old site already had translated URLs, map every one of them to its new address and redirect. Translation plugins change URL patterns between versions, and a rebuild that switches plugin silently orphans an entire language.
The second is what actually gets translated. Full parity is expensive and often unnecessary. A defensible minimum is the practice areas you genuinely serve those communities in, the contact and intake copy, and every required element and disclaimer. Translating the hero headline and leaving the intake copy in English serves nobody.
Then specify, as a build requirement, that required elements are per-language rather than global. That is a template decision, and it is nearly impossible to retrofit once the site is live.
Machine translation, honestly
Machine translation has improved enormously and it is still the wrong tool for the parts that matter most, for a reason that has nothing to do with quality in general.
Legal terminology frequently has no clean equivalent, and a translated page can state something the firm did not intend — about outcomes, about what the firm will do, about what the reader should do next. That output is a communication about the lawyer’s services, and a lawyer answers for it, exactly as they would for English copy nobody read.
A workable split during a Minnesota lawyer website redesign: use machine translation for the first draft if it saves money, then have every page reviewed by someone fluent who understands what the firm is claiming. And for required elements and disclaimers, do not machine-translate at all — confirm the wording with your ethics counsel, since prescribed language in translation is a question this guide cannot answer for you.
Make the switcher findable and the markup honest
Two technical points that decide whether any of this works. The language switcher has to be visible on a phone without hunting — a rebuilt theme often buries it in a menu, and pages nobody can find might as well not exist. And each translated page should declare its language properly in the markup, so search engines serve the right version to the right reader rather than treating the set as duplicates.
Minnesota lawyer website redesign: frequently asked questions
Do attorney advertising rules apply to translated pages?
A communication about a lawyer’s services in another language is still a communication about a lawyer’s services. How the Minnesota rules apply to a particular translated page is a question for the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility and your ethics counsel.
Should disclaimers be translated too?
A disclaimer in a language the reader cannot read is doing very little for the reader. What your required elements must say, and whether translation is appropriate for them, is a question for your ethics counsel — this guide does not supply wording in any language.
Can I use machine translation for law firm website content?
For a first draft, with fluent human review before publication. Published output is a communication the firm answers for, and legal terminology is exactly where automated translation is least reliable.
What happens to translated URLs in a rebuild?
Translation plugins change URL patterns between versions, so switching plugin during a rebuild can orphan an entire language. Map every existing translated URL to its new address and redirect, exactly as you would for English pages.
How long does a Minnesota lawyer website redesign take?
Eight to sixteen weeks, plus translation and review time, which runs in parallel if commissioned early and delays launch if left to the end — which is where it usually ends up.
Minnesota lawyer website redesign: the short version
If you take one thing from this guide, take this: open the Spanish or Somali version of your current site and look at what sits beneath the content. If the disclaimer is in English, your translated pages have been marketing to those readers without giving them the part that qualifies it — and a rebuild is the only realistic moment that gets fixed.
Official source: the Minnesota Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility.
Legal Web Agency is a marketing agency, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. Nothing here states what Minnesota requires on translated pages or supplies disclaimer wording in any language. Confirm current requirements with the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility or your ethics counsel.
Related reading: Law Firm Website Redesign: Complete 2026 Guide, plus the Minnesota advertising rules guide and our law firm website content guide.
