Your law office needs a website, but you shouldn't settle for a basic template with little functionality. The best law firm websites include sleek design, a seamless user experience, authoritative legal content, and are built for conversion.

Beyond your site’s features and integrations, it needs to communicate professionalism and polish. Include social proof in the form of client testimonials to show potential clients that you’re the best at what you do and can help them achieve resolution.

Because high-performing attorney websites often share common elements such as clear calls to action (CTAs), responsive mobile design, and informative content that offers something valuable to its reader, it’s a safe bet to invest your time and energy in adding these elements to your law office website.

Whether your firm specializes in criminal defense, family law, immigration law, or other practice areas, you need a legal website that attracts visitors, communicates credibility, and makes it easy to contact your team of attorneys.

To build the best lawyer website you can — one with fluid messaging, design, and functionality — read on for a summary of tips and tricks, then start implementing them with the help of B12’s expert designers. Whether you’re building a landing page or an expansive, multi-page site for your firm, these best practices and examples will benefit your project.

Law office website best practices

Secure

Website visitors are trusting you with confidential information, so it’s crucial that your law office’s online presence is protected against hacking and other attacks. This is a big part of user experience because if visitors don’t feel like they can trust you, they’re less likely to navigate to multiple pages on your site and take the next step toward conversion. A secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate for your law office website is a must in 2020, as it shields your firm and visitors from security breaches.

Easy to navigate

Potential clients have a very low tolerance for confusing website navigation, slow-loading pages, and glitches. Organize your site’s navigation in a straightforward, consistent way that makes it easy to access important pages like the homepage, Contact page, FAQs page, About page, Practice Areas page, and more. Not only does including too many items on your navigation bar overwhelm users and make your law office site look messy, but it can also hurt your conversion numbers.

Search-engine friendly

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of techniques designed to make your legal website rank higher in specific search engine results. It involves making changes to your site, like adding content to reference specific targeted keywords and expanding your online footprint to relevant, high-quality legal directories. SEO is complicated, but it’s important that you don’t overlook it, as it’s a major piece of how people in your area looking for legal representation end up on your website.

CTA-oriented

A call to action, or CTA, is a website element that’s used to persuade the visitor to perform a specific action, like get in touch with you, schedule a free consultation, or submit a form. The CTA is meant to lead to a conversion, so it’s important to use a clear and concise message that will lead the visitor to your desired action. We recommend testing various CTA options to see which one works the best for your legal website and your target audience. Note that your website header sections need the most convincing CTAs as those sections above the fold get the most eyes on them.

Minimalist design

When designing your legal website, aim for a clean, minimal design that relies on bold CTAs and imagery to grab the visitor’s attention. An elegant design and color scheme mean your website is pleasing to the eye but doesn’t distract from your content, which is what matters most to visitors. Your online presence should have a professional and polished design that makes your firm stand out from the crowd. The best law firm website designs draw the eye without overwhelming the user, and the experienced designers at B12 are pros at striking this balance.

Integration-rich

Even if you’re a small law firm, you want to add as much power as possible to your legal website. Each section and page of your attorney website contains precious real estate that is most efficient when it contains a powerful integration, such as Drift, Intercom, B12 Bookings, and Calendly. An online scheduling tool like B12 Bookings seamlessly integrates with the available slots on your online calendar, allowing potential clients to easily schedule a free consultation with your firm on your website.

Responsive

A great law office website should be responsive and user-friendly on all devices, meaning it looks and performs the same on a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, and mobile phone. With more mobile users than ever before, mobile optimization has become a non-negotiable for all professional legal websites. As a user is scrolling, your attorney website should retain its elegant design and impressive functionality. When you work with B12 on your attorney website, we guarantee that it looks stunning on every screen.

Full of testimonials

Reviews and anecdotes from previous or existing clientele offer convincing social proof to potential clients who are considering retaining your firm’s legal services but haven’t yet made up their mind. Hearing success stories that line up with their needs could be the push they need to reach out or schedule that free consultation. Make sure your testimonial messaging reinforces how enjoyable you are to work with and what a strong partner you make for legal clients.

Examples of the best law firm websites

Maxwell Tillman

This Birmingham, AL personal injury firm’s website includes a clean design, crisp typography, elegant color scheme, and top-notch content that’s relevant to its potential clients. As you scroll down the homepage, you see an overview of the law office’s practice areas, represented by concise copy and high-quality images. Further down the page, Maxwell Tillman touts the impressive press it has received from reputable sources like CBS and Yahoo!. At the bottom of the page, visitors see an easy-to-skim footer with contact information (including phone number and address) and social media links. We recommend modeling your site’s footer after this firm’s.

B12 helped Maxwell Tillman launch a legal website that looks and performs just the way the firm needs it to. With the help of B12’s design and SEO experts, the firm experienced an increase in the quantity and quality of its attorney website leads just weeks after launching.

Atlas Law

Atlas Law is a female-founded private law firm that specializes in residential real estate, family law, and immigration law. A visitor’s first impression of this legal site is “wow, look at all that color!” The site’s homepage is incredibly eye-catching with playful yet professional typography. This unique law firm website demands that the visitor continues scrolling and visiting pages to find out more about Atlas Law’s legal services.

The homepage includes a testimonials gallery, which many web designers consider the most effective piece of legal marketing you can offer. The firm’s testimonials note how dedicated, innovative, and responsive Atlas Law is. Overall, the site design and color scheme is creative, but its messaging is professional, right down to the homepage header tagline.

Bailey Reyes

Bailey Reyes is a virtual law firm that uses state-of-the-art technology to serve its global clientele. The Beaumont, TX-based practice contacted B12 because it needed a high-quality website to accurately portray its vision without blowing its budget.

The Bailey Reyes site employs a monochromatic color scheme and stoic brand voice to communicate professionalism to its visitors, which is a solid approach for all types of law firms around the country. The firm says it receives a lot of compliments on its website, with potential clients noting that it looks expensive. By crafting an attorney website that makes it easy for the firm to publish new legal content and for the firm's visitors to schedule a virtual consultation, B12 helped Bailey Reyes maximize its capacity and efficiency to better serve clients.

Matten Law

Matten Law is a tech-savvy immigration law firm based in Toronto. This law office has years of experience and after working with B12, finally has a beautiful, high-quality website that shows off its impressive legal expertise. Full of functionality and informative content, Matten Law is easy to browse and understand.

This site’s text strikes an enthusiastic tone, its design is clean, and its imagery is sophisticated. Visitors to the website are likely to appreciate the vibrant blues of its color palette and the firm’s emphasis on using technology to work smarter for its clients. After securing several new global customers, Matten Law is confident it will continue to scale its online presence thanks to B12.

Trust B12 to build your best attorney website

An excellent legal website can help your firm raise its revenue, expand its client list, rank higher on search engines like Google, attract top talent, and more! Try B12 now to see a free draft of your new attorney website or landing page, and then work with our experienced designers to customize it.

B12 is an all-in-one solution to manage and grow your practice, with tools like online scheduling, customized intake forms, online payments and invoicing, blog posts, and SEO. We centralize your business efforts, helping you manage clients and meetings, as well as automate more elements of your workflow.

You’re busy running your firm and serving clients — that’s why B12 uses designers and software to bring your business online in 30 days. We create a professional website that is secure, easy for you to edit, search engine- and mobile-friendly, and filled with actionable content that makes a good impression on prospective clients.

Whether you specialize in personal injury, family law, or another practice area, we’re well-versed in how to build an online presence that reaches your desired clientele and keeps them coming back. Try B12 today and see a free draft of your new attorney website in only 60 seconds! For more tips on legal marketing and how to leverage your law firm’s online presence, take a look at our free resources and articles below.